Orhan Pamuk Re-Trialed

Nobel-Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk is to be tried a second time for violating article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which punishes "contempt of the Turkish national identity." The offense--telling a Swiss magazine interviewer "we Turkish have killed 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians and nobody, apart from me, dares to speak about it in Turkey"--was dismissed by the Supreme Court in January of 2008 but is to be tried again under the assumption that the judges were incorrect the first time.

If found guilty this time, Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006 for his "quest for the melancholic soul of his native city" Istanbul, may face fines running to millions of dollars, since every Turkish citizen will be entitled to seek compensation for defamation of the Turkish image.