Swiss court rejects appeal from Turkish politician

An appeals court has confirmed the sentence against a Turkish politician, Doğu Perinçek, for denying that the killings of Armenians early last century were genocide. Perinçek, leader of the Turkish Workers' Party, is to lodge a further appeal at Switzerland's highest instance, the Federal Court, his lawyer said on Wednesday. A court in Lausanne convicted Perinçek in March and ordered him to pay a fine of SFr3,000 ($2,424.6). He was also handed a suspended fine of SFr9,000 and ordered to pay SFr1,000 to the Swiss-Armenian Association as a symbolic gesture. Perinçek had repeatedly denied during a visit to Switzerland in 2005 that the First World War era killings of more than 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide.