Amal Clooney on legal team in Armenian genocide case

STRASBOURG, France — Lawyer Amal Clooney is going before Europe’s top human rights court to argue against a man convicted for denying the 1915 Armenian genocide.

Clooney is arguing on an appeal before the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in favor of the man, Dogu Perincek, in December 2013.

Perincek argued his right to free speech was violated when Swiss courts convicted him of denying the genocide in 2005.

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.