The Associated Press
PARIS — A Senate panel says it would be unconstitutional for France to make it illegal to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago constituted genocide.
Relations between France and Turkey have soured since the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, passed such a bill last month and sent it to the Senate.
The Senate’s Commission of Laws voted Wednesday that such a law, if passed, would violate constitutional protections, notably freedom of speech. The vote was 23 Senators for and 9 against, with 8 abstentions.
The panel vote — a nonbinding recommendation — was the first legislative setback for the controversial bill. The measure goes to the full Senate for debate on Monday.