The introduction of the new and deeply flawed law that criminalizes torture is a lost opportunity for Italy to show its commitment to human rights and its international obligations.

The path to the creation of a specific law against the crime of torture in the national penal code, a process that began 28 years ago, is winding to a close. Italy is finally going to attempt to comply with the obligations it agreed to when it signed the UN Convention against Torture in 1989. Article 4 of the Convention declares:

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offenses under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

Wasting time, watering down

At the urging of human and civil rights associations, including Antigone and Amnesty International Italy, the government, after an impressive delay, started to draft a law a few years ago that would make it possible to punish crimes of torture, instead of applying sentences for generic offenses with smaller penalties and responsibilities, as has happened for too many years.

The discussion in the Senate began in 2013, but it took three years to be modified and ratified by the Chamber of Deputies, and later sent to the Senate again. In July 2016, the Senate suspended the reading and approval of the draft bill, after having already heavily changed it to the extent of being incompatible with the UN definition of torture.

A vague law

What the Senate is finally about to approve is a law considered unacceptable by both Antigone and Amnesty International Italy: not only is the definition of torture deliberately vague and difficult to apply, thus failing to comply with that of the UN Convention and to enact its prescriptions, but the bill also restricts the notion of psychological torture to an unacceptable extent, when considering the tools and methods of contemporary torture.

As positive as it is that Italy is going to have an actual crime of torture in its penal code, it truly looks like the Italian government once again did not observe its international obligations properly. The new law is 28 years late, confused and below expectations.