7.2.2 Amnesties, pardons, other measures of clemency or impediments which preclude or indicate unwillingness to provide prompt and fair prosecution and punishment of perpetrators, including full exemption from criminal or other responsibility due to favourable provisions of legislation on disclosure or repentance, frustrate the aims of effective investigation and combating impunity and should be avoided. The guideline on restrictions of use of measures of clemency towards perpetrators of ill-treatment and other serious human rights violations is based on the indications suggested in a number of UN documents and Strasbourg Court judgments. The CAT has stated that amnesties and pardons “violate the principle of non-derogability”.208 The Human Rights Commission advanced the set of relevant standards by spelling out: “The fact that a perpetrator discloses the violations that he, she or others have committed in order to benefit from the favourable provisions of legislation on disclosure or repentance cannot exempt him or her from criminal or other responsibility. The disclosure may only provide grounds for a reduction of sentence in order to encourage revelation of the truth.”209 The Court has also taken a view that: “… [W]here a State agent has been charged with crimes involving torture or ill-treatment, it is of the utmost importance for the purposes of an “effective remedy” that criminal proceedings and sentencing are not time-barred and that the granting of an amnesty or pardon should not be permissible.”210 This view has been reaffirmed in a more recent judgment that concerned the right to life. With a reference to the abovementioned assertion, the Court made it clear that it: ...considers that when an agent of the State, in particular a law-enforcement officer, is convicted of a crime that violates Article 2 of the Convention, the granting of an amnesty or pardon can scarcely serve the purpose of an adequate punishment (see, mutatis mutandis, Okkalı, cited above, § 76, and Abdülsamet Yaman v. Turkey, no. 32446/96, § 55, 2 November 2004). On the contrary, the Court expects States to be all the more stringent when punishing their own law‑enforcement 208. General Comment N2, CAT/C/GC/2, para.5. 209. United Nations, Econ. & Soc. Council, Commission on Human Rights, Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1 (Feb. 8, 2005). 210. Abdülsamet Yaman v. Turkey, Judgment of 2 November 2004, application no. 32446/96, para. 55. Effective investigation of ill-treatment – Guidelines ► Page 70