Sarkozy orders new genocide law after top court rules bill unconstitutional
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered his government to draft a new law punishing denial of the Armenian genocide after the Constitutional Council struck down a previous bill, BBC reports.
The President noted the decision of the Constitutional Council today about the law criminalizing denial of genocides recognized by law, passed by Parliament last month," said a statement released by the Elysee Palace.
It added that the French President believed that denial of genocides was intolerable. "He has instructed the government to prepare a new text, taking into account the decision of the Constitutional Council."
The Constitutional Council earlier ruled the law backed by Mr Sarkozy infringed on freedom of expression.
The French Senate passed in January the bill imposing a 45,000-euro (60.53 U.S. dollars) fine and a year in jail on those guilty of denying that World War 1-era deaths of over one million Armenians under the Ottoman rule amounted to "genocide."
However, in February more than 130 of senators and MPs across the political divide had appealed to the constitutional court to examine the bill, in a move welcomed by Turkey.
France's Constitutional Council on Tuesday ruled unconstitutional the controversial law criminalizing the denial the mass killing of Armenian by Ottoman Turks in 1915, which was immediately welcomed by the Turkish Embassy in France, Agence France-Presse reports.
The Embassy's spokesperson announced that ‘the court's decision allows Turkey to hope that the relations between the two countries have a future.'
The vote last month spurred angry protests in both in Paris and Ankara. The Turkish government suspended political and military co-operation with France.
The Turkish government argues that judging what happened in eastern Turkey in 1915-16 should be left to historians, and that the new French law would have restricted freedom of speech.
The killings are regarded as the seminal event of modern Armenian history, a tragic bond uniting one of the world's most dispersed peoples.
Among the other states which formally recognise them as genocide are Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Russia and Uruguay. The UK, US, Israel and others use different terminology.
France is home to an estimated 500,000 ethnic Armenians while about 550,000 Turkish citizens also live in the country.
