under the Court’s case law in cases of a person’s ill-treatment while in detention, or wilful illtreatment contrary to Article 3 ECHR, adequate means of remedy is the one provided by criminal law. Due to their seriousness and impact on human dignity and the rule of law, this kind of violations cannot be remedied exclusively through an award of compensation.13 Zontul is a major judgment notably because it shed light on a major, persisting flaw of the Greek law and practice concerning the definition of torture in the Greek criminal code and the domestic courts’ case law.14 The Court reconfirmed that the rape of a detainee by a state agent must be considered as a particularly grave and abhorrent form of ill-treatment, given the easiness with which the aggressor may take advantage of the victim’s vulnerability and weakened resistance. It recalled that rape leaves deep psychological scars on the victim, which do not respond to the passage of time as quickly as other forms of physical and mental violence. As a consequence, the Court found fault with the Greek courts’ decisions, stressing that, on the basis of its own case law and of that by other international courts, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, rape with an object constitutes an act of torture and consequently a clear, substantive violation of Article 3 ECHR, as was the case in Zontul. One of the major problems in this context is Article 137A§2 of the Greek criminal code that defines torture as the “planned” (μεθοδευμένη) infliction by a public official on a person of severe physical, and other similar forms of, pain and is punishable, as a felony, to at least five years’ imprisonment. The condition of planning does not exist in the internationally established definition of torture contained in Article 1 of the 1984 Convention against Torture.15 In fact this additional condition makes prosecution and sanctioning extremely difficult, if not impossible. In Zontul, the naval tribunals, both in first instance and on appeal, did not qualify the applicant’s rape with a truncheon as torture but as an affront to the victim’s sexual dignity, an offence that, under Article 137A§3 of the criminal code, is sanctioned with a lighter form of imprisonment of at least three years. As noted earlier, in fact in Zontul the actual penalties that were finally imposed on the main perpetrator and his accomplice were six and five months’ imprisonment, which were also suspended and commuted to fines. In his 2013 report on Greece the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights 16 noted that, since 1984 when Article 137A was introduced into the Greek criminal code, only one police officer had thus far been convicted of torture, in 2011 (case of Sidiropoulos and Papakostas). That conviction to a six years’ imprisonment concerned torture in 2002 by electric shocks of two young Greek men. However, after an appeal to the Athens Mixed Jury Appeal Court, the final sentence imposed in 2014 was five years’ imprisonment which was converted into a fine of five euros daily, payable in 36 monthly instalments.17 Reportedly, as of early 2017 this was the sole case where a criminal sanction on the ground of torture was upheld on appeal in Greece. The case has been brought before the Strasbourg Court.18 In this context it is noted that under Article 137B of the criminal code the use of systematic means of torture, such as electric shocks or falanga, constitutes an aggravating circumstance and such Zontul, para. 72. See also Gäfgen v. Germany, GC, judgment of 1 June 2010, para. 119. See N. Sitaropoulos,“The Incompatibility of the Definition of Torture in Greece with International Law” 19/01/2017, available at: http://verfassungsblog.de/the-incompatibility-of-the-definition-of-torture-in-greecewith-international-law/. 15 See text at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CAT.aspx. 16 See report by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights following his visit to Greece from 28 January to 1 February 2013, 16 April 2013, para. 107, available at: https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?Index=no&command=com.instranet.CmdBlobGet&InstranetI mage=2306182&SecMode=1&DocId=2024918&Usage=2. 17 See Greek Helsinki Monitor et al., Contribution to the list of issues, UN CAT, 21 February 2014, p. 2, available at: http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/TreatyBodyExternal/Countries.aspx?CountryCode=GRC&Lang=EN. 18 Sidiropoulos et Papakostas c. Grèce, application lodged on 17 May 2010, communicated to the government on 21 April 2016. 13 14 6