The Condemnation of the Italian State for Viola-tion of the Prohibition of Torture. Remarks on the Ruling passed by the European Court of Human Rights, Section IV, 7th April 2015, Application no. 6884/11, case of Cestaro v. Italy

Abstract

This paper analyzes the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling in the Cestaro v. Italy case, focusing specifically on the conviction for violation of Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamen-tal Freedoms by Italian criminal law, whose framework does not recognize torture as a crime and does not provide instru-ments of deterrence to effectively prevent the execution and the recurrence of such acts. Currently, the Italian Parliament is discussing a draft amend-ment to the Criminal Code and aims to introduce the concept of torture as a crime; however, in the light of comments made by the European Court of Human Rights, this project questions whether the proposed solution will be able to prevent a repeat of events similar to those that occurred in 2001 after the G8 Summit in Genoa.