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EUROPEAN CONVENTION FOR THE PREVENTION OF TORTURE AND INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT The European Convention for the prevention of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment was signed by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on June 1987, ratified on November 1987 and entered into force in 1989. The Convention origins were drafted in 1976 by Jean – Jacques Gautier, member of the Red Cross International Committee and founder of the Swiss Committee for the Prevention of Torture (SCPT). He wrote a report as an answer to the Governmental Federal Council's request. Gautier proposed a Convention to fix visits of different and impartial experts. He wanted to promote the Red Cross Committee activity but on a larger scale. His first attempt failed but in 1983 the Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted the Provision 971 on the protection of prisoners. In 1987, after four years, it was ratified for the first time. Today the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has been adopted by forty countries on a total of forty-one in the Council of Europe: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Check Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Liechtenstein,Leetonia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Swedish, Greece, Hungary, Island Ireland, Italy, Swiss, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Netherlands, San Marino Republic, Macedonia, only Lithuania hasn't adopted it yet. The Convention provides non-judicial preventive machinery to protect detainees. It is based on a system of visits by independent and impartial experts who have unlimited access to places of detention. The Committee acts in co-operation with the Contracting Parties' authorities. Two amending Protocols were then added to the C.P.T. Convention. Protocol n.1 signed on 4 November 1993 in Strasbourg, opens the Convention to non-member States; Protocol n.2, signed on 4 November 1993 in Strasbourg, introduces two new paragraphs to Art. 5 of the Convention including technical changes for the election of CPT's membership. It also allows members to be re-elected twice. The Committee’s members are elected once and their office lasts four years. Each experts acts on a personal title and his principles are independence and impartiality.
1.THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE
Art. 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". The Court didn't fixed what precisely Inhuman or Degrading Treatment means and so its judgments are based on an objective "minimum gravity level". A violation of this level means a violation of Art. 3. A correct evaluation is based on willfulness, the treatment duration, mental and physical suffering intensity, psychiatric problems. The idea behind the drafting of the 1987 European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was to prevent such ill-treatment of people deprived of their liberty. The Committee provides non-judicial preventive machinery to protect detainees. The CPT's members are independent and impartial experts from a variety of backgrounds including law, medicine, prisons affairs and politics, human rights experts, etc., which form international delegations. CPT delegations have some benefits in order to better accomplish their visits; they have unlimited access to places of detention and complete freedom of movement within them, they can't be arrested, and their luggage can't be confiscated. All documents belonging to the Committee, then, can't be accessed.
2 COMMITEE'S POWERS AND VISITS TO PLACES OF DETENTION If a country refuses to co-operate, the CPT may decide to make a public statement. CPT members visit all places of detention - e.g. prisons and places of youth detention, police stations, army barracks and psychiatric hospitals; etc. The CPT's annual report to the Committee of Ministers shall be sent to the Consultive Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Committee must notify the state concerned but need not to specify the period between the notification and the actual visit. Under the Convention, CPT delegations have unlimited access to places of detention and complete freedom of movement within them. Governments' objections to the visits can only be justified on grounds of particular circumstances. In case of continued torture treatments, the Committee can open an enquiry without the need to submit a specific application. Applications to the Committee can be submitted by victims of some sort of violations, or, if the person concerned is unable to, by some relatives or close friends. An individual application to the C.P.T. is submitted to an admissibility procedure and it is judged admissible only if all domestic remedies have been exhausted and if it has not been submitted to another procedure of international investigation. If judged admissible, the case is then analyzed. The procedure result is not binding but a declared violation of human rights by such an important organization is quite a real condemnation. In Italy, the Civil Penal Code doesn't include a specific crime against human rights; as a consequence many of the articles of the Convention against Torture of 1984 and signed even by Italy are outstanding. The European Court on Human Rights has had to intervene many times for the violation of Art. 3 of the Convention. CPT delegations can interview detainees without witnesses and have free access to anyone who can provide information. Since 1987, the Committee has visited Italy many times to check living conditions inside prisons, the structure and service efficacy, army barracks, police stations as well as finance police stations, psychiatric hospitals; and it drafted many reports to whom Italy always answered with long delays. In particular, the over-crowded prison living conditions have been denounced many times as physical and mental torture. The fist Italian visit of the Committee was in 1992. The second visit took place on 22 October and 6 November 1995. On 4 December 1997 the Committee drafted a report with recommendations to the Italian government. The Italian government made a public statement only at the beginning of 2000, five years after the 1997 Committee report. The last Committee visit in Italy is dated 2000. Reports with recommendations to the Italian government have been published about the first and the second visit. The report and recommendations, if any, of the last visit haven't been declared yet. Up to now, the Committee has made 69 visits and 30 additional "ad hoc" visits in the Contracting States.
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