A similar law was rejected by a French court early this year. The Constitutional Council of the French Republic [official website, in French] ruled [JURIST report] in February that a French law [materials, in French] making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered a genocide by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 is unconstitutional. Despite one Senate committee's rejection, France's genocide denial ban was passed [JURIST reports] by both the Senate and the National Assembly [official websites, in French] in mid-January. However, the law was contested [JURIST report] only a week later when opposition members of both houses of parliament gathered the necessary signatures to warrant the law's review by the Constitutional Council. Although former president Nicolas Sarkozy previously insisted that the law did not specifically target Turkey, the Turkish government repeatedly warned that and affirmation of the law would result in Turkey imposing sanctions on France [AFP report].