PROMINENT LAWYER AMAL CLOONEY TO REPRESENT ARMENIA AT ECHR
Legal Monitor Worldwide
December 24, 2014 Wednesday
Amal Ramzi Alamuddin, wife of prominent actor and human rights
activist George Clooney, will be one of the attorneys representing
Armenia next month at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR),
according to Harut Sassounian, Publisher of The California Courier.
“Mrs. Clooney is a highly regarded attorney specializing in
international law, criminal law, human rights, and extradition. She
has been involved in several major lawsuits such as return of the Elgin
Marbles from Great Britain to Greece, and defending Julian Assange of
WikiLeaks and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She has
also worked with the Prosecutor of the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon,
and the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia,”
Sassounian says.
She was born in Lebanon to a Druze father and Sunni Muslim mother in
1978. At the age of two, her family moved to the United Kingdom. She
received her law degree from New York University School of Law and
clerked at the International Court of Justice (World Court). After
returning to London in 2010, she became a barrister at the Doughty
Street Chambers. She served as advisor to Kofi Annan, UN Special Envoy
on Syria, and as Counsel to the 2013 UN Drone Inquiry team. She is
fluent in English, French and Arabic. Her marriage to George Clooney
in September 2014 made worldwide headlines.
“With such impeccable credentials, Mrs. Clooney will be a great asset
to Armenia’s legal team in Strasbourg, in the appeal of Perincek vs.
Switzerland before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human
Rights on Jan 28. The case involves the conviction by Swiss courts
of Dogu Perincek, a minor Turkish political party leader, who had
travelled to Switzerland in 2005 with the explicit intent of denying
the truth of the Armenian Genocide. In 2008, Perincek appealed the
Swiss ruling to the European Court of Human Rights. A majority of
five out of seven ECHR judges ruled on Dec 17, 2013 that Switzerland
had violated Perincek’s right to free expression,” Sassounian says.
“This ruling was an unfair and unacceptable double standard, as the
court considered denial of the Jewish Holocaust a crime, but Armenian
Genocide denial an infringement on free speech. The five judges who
ruled against Switzerland made countless judgmental and factual
errors, misrepresenting Perincek’s allegations, misinterpreting
Switzerland’s laws and court rulings, lacking basic knowledge of the
Armenian Genocide, and repeatedly contradicting themselves. Two of
the seven judges disagreed with the majority’s ruling and submitted
a comprehensive 19-page report on the Armenian Genocide, siding with
the Swiss court,” he says. On March 17, 2014, Switzerland decided
to appeal the ruling to ECHR’s 17-judge Grand Chamber, to defend the
integrity of its laws and the country’s legal system. Specifically,
the Swiss government challenged the court’s decision on three grounds:
1. ECHR had never before dealt with the juridical qualification of
genocide and the scope of freedom of expression;
2. The undue restriction of “the margin of appreciation” available
to Switzerland under ECHR’s jurisprudence;
3. The establishment of ‘artificial distinctions’ – in the absence
of an international verdict, ECHR should have considered the Turkish
Court’s 1919 guilty verdicts against the masterminds of the Armenian
Genocide as evidence related to World Court’s jurisprudence.
Last year, when ECHR’s lower court was considering Perincek’s case,
Armenia did not participate. Turkey, however, intervened by submitting
extensive documentation questioning the veracity of the Armenian
Genocide. This time around Armenia will take part with a strong legal
team, which includes Geoffrey Robertson QC, a preeminent international
lawyer and author of the remarkable book, “An Inconvenient Genocide:
Who Now Remembers the Armenians?” Robertson will be joined in court by
his associate Amal Clooney, and two Armenian government representatives
Gevorg Kostanyan and Emil Babayan.
It is imperative that on the eve of the Armenian Genocide’s Centennial
in 2015, ECHR’s Grand Chamber reverse the lower court’s flawed
ruling, restoring the integrity of Swiss laws and preventing Turkey
and Perincek from exporting their genocide denialism to Europe and
beyond, Sassounian concludes. 2014 Legal Monitor Worldwide.
From: Baghdasarian