EINARSSON v. ICELAND JUDGMENT - SEPARATE OPINION 19 The majority accept that it is in the first place for the national authorities, in particular the domestic courts, to classify a statement as a fact or as a value judgment (see paragraphs 40 and 48 of the judgment). They add, however, that the Court may make its own assessment of the impugned statement (see paragraph 48 of the judgment). I agree with these principles. It is indeed not the Court’s task to substitute its own assessment of the facts for that of the domestic courts and, as a general rule, it is for those courts to assess the evidence before them (see, among other authorities, F.G. v. Sweden [GC], no. 43611/11, § 118, ECHR 2016, and Bărbulescu v. Romania [GC], no. 61496/08, § 129, ECHR 2017). In normal circumstances the Court requires cogent elements to lead it to depart from the findings of fact reached by the domestic courts (see Bărbulescu, ibid.). In the present case the Supreme Court examined whether X, when he used the word “rapist” in the expression “Fuck you rapist bastard”, was referring to the applicant as someone who had committed rape, in the sense of the crime defined in the Penal Code. The Supreme Court admitted that “it [could] be agreed” that the term “rapist” referred to a person accused of committing rape. The majority state that the Supreme Court “in fact accepted” that the term referred to a person accused of committing rape (see paragraph 49 of the judgment). In my opinion, the Supreme Court was not so affirmative. More importantly, the Supreme Court read the term in its context. An assessment of the meaning of a given word, read in its context, is typically one for which the domestic judge is better placed than the European Court. As I understand the Supreme Court’s judgment, the relevant context was composed of the altered picture and the comment “Fuck you rapist bastard”, taken as a whole. It is indeed the picture of the applicant, taken from the magazine in which he had given an interview, with the graphic and written comments by X, which was the subject of the expression. By using the picture as the “medium” for his message, X was manifestly reacting to the interview. By drawing a cross on the applicant’s face and by writing the word “loser” across it, X was manifestly expressing his disapproval of what the applicant had stated about himself. Finally, under the altered picture, in small letters, appeared the words “Fuck you rapist bastard”. I understand the Supreme Court’s assessment as meaning that in this context the word “rapist” had lost its objective meaning and had to be understood as a swear word against the applicant. One may disagree with such an assessment, as the minority judge of the Supreme Court did, but I do not see anything unreasonable in it. 5. The majority of our Court apparently read the Supreme Court’s judgment as referring to a different context from the one identified above. According to them, “when describing the context of the statement in question, the Supreme Court relied primarily on the applicant’s participation