Abstract

The approval by the Italian parliament of a law on torture occurred at the end of a very suffered debate, more than thirty years after the signing of the UN Convention against Torture. The difficult search for an agreement in parliament is reflected in the text approved in July 2017, which differs in many respects from the definition provided by the Convention. From the beginning the parliament sought a "weakened" formulation of the offence of torture, due to the influence exerted by the heads of police forces, traditionally averse to the introduction of a specific offence in the Penal Code, and so critiques and institutional suggestions, of a high national and international level, didn't reached the parliament during the discussion.