What is irreducible life imprisonment, the heaviest penalty in the penal code?

Europe 1 with AFP 5:24 p.m., June 13, 2022

The requisitions fell at the end of last week at the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015. The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) requested incompressible life imprisonment against Salah Abdeslam, the only terrorist still alive from the murderous commandos.

The PNAT considered that this "key player" had "remained faithful to his ideology to the end" and had never expressed "the slightest remorse".

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This extremely rare penalty is the heaviest provided for by the penal code.

This incompressible or "actual life" makes it impossible to request a sentence adjustment.

The person sentenced to this sentence may however, after 30 years in prison, ask the sentence enforcement court to reconsider this impossibility.

Sentence handed down four times since 1994

The latter can only reduce the duration of the security period under certain conditions, and after consulting a commission made up of five judges from the Court of Cassation responsible for determining whether it is necessary to put an end to the application. of the decision of the Assize Court.

To be able to benefit from an increase in his unlimited security period, the convict must demonstrate serious guarantees of social rehabilitation.

The court also ensures that its decision is not likely to cause a serious disturbance to public order and gathers the opinion of the victims beforehand.

He decides after the expertise of a college of three medical experts who assess the state of dangerousness of the condemned person.

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The "real life" was introduced in 1994 at the instigation of the Minister of Justice Pierre Méhaignerie, marked by the rape and murder of a young girl by a man already convicted of sexual crimes.

It has only been pronounced four times: against Pierre Bodein, known as "Pierrot le fou" in 2007, Michel Fourniret - who has since died in prison - in 2008, Nicolas Blondiau in 2013 and Yannick Luende Bothelo in 2016, each time for murders of children accompanied by rape or torture.

Sentencing extended to terrorist crimes in 2016

Initially provided for these crimes only, the incompressible life sentence was extended in 2011 to murders or attempted murders of persons holding public authority (law enforcement, magistrates, prison guards).

11 of the 20 defendants in the trial of the November 13 attacks - six of whom are being tried in absentia - were dismissed for complicity in attempted murders in an organized gang and in connection with a terrorist enterprise on the BRI police officers who intervened at the Bataclan, and therefore incur incompressible perpetuity.

After the series of attacks that bloodied France in 2015, “real” life imprisonment was extended to terrorist crimes in June 2016, but this law is not retroactive.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which was seized by Pierre Bodein, had validated in 2014 the life sentences applied in France, considering that they offered a hope, even a tiny one, of release to the detainee.