A/67/279 66. A growing concern at the irreconcilable conflict between the legally imposed death penalty and the infliction of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is evident even where some organs of protection have hesitated to pronounce accordingly. In the case Ng v. Canada (1993) of the Human Rights Committee, dissenting opinions show resounding disapproval of the majority’s attempt to make a distinction among various methods of execution, because the death penalty as such constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, regardless of how it is carried out. 50 67. In his partly dissenting opinion to the decision in the case Ocalan v. Turkey (2005), 51 Judge Lech Garlicki stated that article 3 had been violated because any imposition of the death penalty represented per se inhuman and degrading treatment prohibited by the Convention. Thus, while correct, the majority’s conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty following an unfair trial represented a violation of article 3 of the European Convention seemed to him to stop short of addressing the real problem. He drew attention to the 2002 opinion of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in which it recalled that, in its most recent resolutions, it had reaffirmed its beliefs that the application of the death penalty constituted inhuman and degrading punishment and a violation of the most fundamental right, that to life itself, and that capital punishment had no place in civilized, democratic societies governed by the rule of law. Judge Garlicki stated that, in consequence, the only question that remained was whether the Court had the power to state the obvious truth, namely, that capital punishment had become an inhuman and degrading punishment per se. 68. Five years later, the European Court held in the case Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi v. United Kingdom (2010) 52 that judicial execution involved the deliberate and premeditated destruction of a human being by the State authorities and that, whatever the method of execution, the extinction of life involved some physical pain. In addition, the Court held: that the foreknowledge of death at the hands of the State must inevitably give rise to intense psychological suffering; the fact that the imposition and use of the death penalty negated fundamental human rights had been recognized; and that in the preamble to Protocol No. 13 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Contracting States had described themselves as convinced that the abolition of the death penalty was essential for the full recognition of the inherent dignity of all human beings. It therefore could be stated that the European Court, by referring not only to the destruction of a human being but to the physical pain and moreover the intense psychological suffering that the foreknowledge of death gives rise to, acknowledged that the death penalty constituted also a violation of the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In addition, on 26 June 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted resolution 1560 on the promotion by member States of an international moratorium on the death penalty, in __________________ 50 51 52 18 Human Rights Committee, communication No. 469/1991. See also Manfred Nowak, “Is the death penalty an inhuman punishment?”, in The Jurisprudence of Human Rights Law: A comparative and interpretive approach, Theodore S. Orlin, Allan Rosas and Martin Scheinin eds. (Turku, Finland: Institute for Human Rights, Abo Akademi University, 2000). Judgement of 12 May 2005 in Ocalan v. Turkey, Application No. 46221/99. Judgement of 2 March 2010 in Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi v. United Kingdom, Application No. 61498/08, para. 115. 12-45812