Published on 4 April 2022
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 56209/19
Mohamed RASNABE
against the Netherlands
lodged on 23 October 2019
communicated on 17 March 2022
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the alleged lack of any genuine prospect of the applicant’s release from his life-imprisonment sentence. That sentence was imposed on the applicant, who is a Moroccan national without a right of residence in the Netherlands, by a first-instance court in 2013. On 29 June 2017 the Amsterdam Court of Appeal imposed the same sentence after having found the applicant guilty of being the co-perpetrator of three murders and an attempted murder and of being an accomplice to another murder. In its reasoning on the imposition of the penalty, the Court of Appeal considered, having regard, inter alia, to the entry into force on 1 March 2017 of the Decree Advisory Committee Life-Sentenced Prisoners (Besluit Adviescollege Levenslanggestraften), that Dutch law now provided for a review mechanism which was compatible with the standards developed in the Court’s case-law and on the basis of which life sentences could, in appropriate cases, be reduced, thus that the imposition of such a sentence on the applicant could not be said to be contrary to Article 3 of the Convention.
The Supreme Court rejected the applicant’s appeal in cassation on 23 April 2019; it came to the same conclusion as the Court of Appeal, considering, inter alia, that the lack of a right of residence neither rendered impossible that activities aimed at rehabilitation be made available to the applicant during his incarceration, nor constituted from the outset an impediment to the granting of a pardon.
The applicant, in essence, alleges that current Dutch legislation and practice still do not meet the Convention standards, making his life sentence de jure and de facto irreducible, contrary to Article 3 of the Convention.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Is the applicant’s life sentence compatible with Article 3 of the Convention? In particular, do the criteria and conditions for review laid down in domestic law have a sufficient degree of clarity and certainty, enabling the applicant to know, at the outset of his sentence, what he must do to be considered for release, and under what conditions a review of his sentence will take place (see Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC], nos. 66069/09 and 2 others, ECHR 2013, §§ 119-122; Murray v. the Netherlands [GC], no. 10511/10, §§ 99-104, 26 April 2016; and Hutchinson v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 57592/08, §§ 42-45, 17 January 2017)?
2. The Government are requested (1) to indicate how the practice of the review of life sentences has developed since the entry into force of the Decree Advisory Committee Life‑Sentenced Prisoners, and (2) to provide an overview of recent domestic case-law regarding that practice.