LONDON — Amal Clooney, humanitarian lawyer and wife of George Clooney, is about to become part of another high profile case. According to The Telegraph, Clooney will be part of a legal team representing Armenia in a case involving denial of the Armenian genocide by a Turkish politician.
Dogu Perincek was found guilty by a Swiss court in 2008 of denying, during a visit to Switzerland, that the genocide ever took place.
Mr Perincek, from the Left-wing Turkish Workers’ Party, called the genocide “an international lie” and was fined by the court in Switzerland.
Mrs Clooney will work alongside her head of chambers, Geoffrey Robertson, QC. Their involvement in the case was confirmed to The Telegraph by their chambers in London. The first hearing has been scheduled for Jan 28.
The Telegraph also reports that Mr Robertson recently published a book on the historical controversy, “An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians?”. The book, released in October, “proves beyond reasonable doubt that the horrific events of 1915 constituted the crime against humanity that is known today as genocide”, according to the publishers, Random House.
Armenians around the world will commemorate the centenary of the genocide on April 24, when Armenians began to be rounded up and killed by the Turks the Telegraph reports, adding that tens of thousands of ablebodied men were killed while women, children and the elderly were forced out of Turkey on death marches into the Syrian desert.
Two weeks after marrying the Hollywood actor and director in Venice, Oxfordeducated Mrs Clooney was in Athens to advise the Greek government on how best to proceed with their claim over the Elgin Marbles, which are on display at the British Museum in London.
A barrister with Doughty Street Chambers in London, she was called to the bar in 2010 and specialises in international law, human rights and extradition. Fluent in French and Arabic, she has represented Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine.
