Conditional release from life imprisonment

Abstract

Prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment undoubtedly derives from all the main international human rights instruments.Unlike the death penalty, which is undesirable (see: Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty) and has already been abolished in the member states of the Council of Europe and the European Union (see: Protocol No. 6 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms concerning the Abolition of the Death Penalty, Article 1: «The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed»), the sentence of life imprisonment is not in itself prohibited and does not constitute a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. But the question is whether life imprisonment without the possibility of conditional release is in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights.