What's Amal Clooney up to? Get the lowdown on the Lebanese celebrity lawyer's latest case

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) began on Wednesday an appeal hearing launched by Switzerland against Turkey's Workers' Party (İP) Chairman Doğu Perinçek, who was convicted by a Swiss court for denying the Armenian claims of genocide, in a case that pits Turkey against Switzerland and Armenia, which is represented in Strasbourg by Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.

İP leader Perinçek won an appeal at the European court against a Swiss court decision to convict him for branding the claims of Armenian genocide an “international lie” during a series of speeches in Switzerland in 2007. The ECtHR said in its Dec. 17, 2013, decision that the politician had exercised his “right to free speech.”

Switzerland, on the other hand, asked the ECtHR to review its decision in 2014. The Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg-based court is reviewing the court's earlier verdict on Wednesday. The court is not expected to announce a verdict at the end of the hearing.

Around 200 people from Turkey gathered in front of the Strasbourg court to show support for Perinçek. A group of political figures, including former European Union Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış, former Republican Peoples' Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal and CHP deputy chairman Haluk Koç, were also present at the hearing.

Turkey hailed the European court's initial decision to reverse the Swiss ruling against Perinçek and is a co-defendant in the case. Armenia, on the other hand, has joined the case as a co-plaintiff along with a number of Armenian diaspora organizations.

Amal Clooney, a Lebanese-born British lawyer of international law and human rights who became a household name when she tied the knot with actor George Clooney in September 2014, is one of the lawyers in the appeal case.

The ruling has implications for other European states such as France, which have tried to criminalize the refusal to apply the term genocide to the massacres of Armenians during the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey categorically denies the claims of Armenian genocide, saying there were deaths on both sides when Armenians revolted against the Ottoman Empire during the years of World War I to create their own state in collaboration with the Russian forces then invading eastern Anatolia.

The European court said in its December 2013 decision that the “free exercise of the right to openly discuss questions of a sensitive and controversial nature was one of the fundamental aspects of freedom of expression and distinguished a tolerant and pluralistic democratic society from a totalitarian or dictatorial regime."

Turkey has welcomed the ruling and said it expects the court to uphold its judgment when its Grand Chamber reviews it.