The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area ill-treatment.112 In the same resolution, the United Nations Human Rights Council decided that the upcoming biennial high-level panel discussion to be held at the 34th session of the Human Rights Council will address the human rights violations related to the use of the death penalty, in particular with respect to the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. This resolution has explicitly been supported by a number of OSCE participating States, including Albania, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Montenegro, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Developments at the regional level By virtue of being members of the Council of Europe, 47 of the OSCE participating States are state parties to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (ECHR) and under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). As mentioned above, as early as 1989, the ECtHR held that the exposure to the “death row phenomenon” was in violation of the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment.113 In addition, since 1989, the Court has asked member states to require firm diplomatic assurances from retentionist countries that persons to be extradited or expelled will not be sentenced to death. In the 2005 case of Ocalan v. Turkey, the ECtHR held that capital punishment in peacetime had come to be regarded as an unacceptable form of punishment that was no longer permissible under Article 2 of the ECHR, and that the imposition of a death sentence after an unfair trial constitutes a violation of Article 3 of the ECHR, notably the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.114 In a partly dissenting opinion to the decision in this case, Judge Lech Garlicki stated that article 3 of the ECHR had been violated because any imposition of the death penalty represented per se inhuman and degrading treatment, including, but not limited to, after an unfair trial.115 Finally, in the 2010 case Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi v. United Kingdom, the ECtHR came to the conclusion Article 2 of the ECHR has been amended so as to remove the exception permitting the death penalty, and stated that “the Court does not consider that the wording of the second sentence of Article 2 (1) continues to act as a bar to its interpreting the words inhuman or degrading treatment of punishment in Article 3 as including the death penalty.”116 In this case, due to a real risk of being sentenced to death if extradited to Iraq, the ECtHR concluded that the fact that the applicants knew about this risk caused, “intense psychological suffering,” and held that causing the applicants psychological suffering of this nature and degree constituted inhuman treatment in 112  Human Rights Council, op. cit., note 28. 113  ECtHR, case of Soering v. UK, judgment of 7 July 1989, paras. 100 – 111, <http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=0 01-57619&v=1392752313000#{“itemid”:[“001-57619”]}>. 114  Öcalan v. Turkey, op. cit., note 19, para. 166 and 175. 115  Ibid., partly concurring, partly dissenting opinion of Judge Garlicki, page 65. 116  Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi v. United Kingdom, op. cit., note 33. 29