Complaint filed against minaret ban

Shortly after the Swiss ban on minarets, the former spokesman for the Geneva mosque Hafid Ouardiri has filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on the grounds that the ban violates religious freedom. But he has little chance of success, writes the Berner Zeitung: "According to Ouardiri's lawyers, Switzerland cannot implement the ban on minarets should the Court grant his suit. ... According to the Swiss professor of criminal law Stefan Trechsel, former president of the European Commission for Human rights and currently a judge at the Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague, the chances for the complaint are not particularly good. ... The European Court of Human Rights is just a sort of emergency brake, he says. First of all the case must be tried by the Swiss courts, right up to the Supreme Court. And on top of that, the plaintiffs are not personally affected by the minaret ban, because they hadn't filed a request to construct a minaret."

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