…proclaim
a group of Frenchmen [about
the death penalty], and not just any Frenchmen, or the usual rightist bogeymen, but a group of 10 prisoners condemned to life in jail with no chance of parole.
We, those who have been entombed alive for life… we ask for the reestablishment of the death penalty for ourselves. … Enough hypocrisy! We'd rather get it over with … than to see ourselves die a slow death. … Noone speaks about long sentences anymore, which are [nothing less than] slow death penalties.
As it happens,
Le Monde published an op-ed piece by a lawyer many years ago castigating (French) justice for keeping life behind bars as a sentencing option, because obviously life in jail constituted cruel and unjust punishment for the poor criminals which in no way could be endorsed in today's avant-garde, humanistic, and cozy societies. And, sure enough, solitary confinement is compared to
Middle Age dungeons:
Carlos claims that his long years of solitary confinement constitute "inhuman and degrading treatment," banned by the European Convention on Human Rights
In any case, it would seem that the human rights activists should not fully turn their disapproving eyes on America just yet. If ensuring satisfaction among their prisoners is their goal, they still seem to have quite a lot of work before them in Europe. Indeed, in light of the revelations above, they need to make a 180º turn, because they have been going in the wrong direction, in the diametricaly opposite direction of the one that at least some of the people they claim to stand up for have been demanding…
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