OTEGI MONDRAGON v. SPAIN JUDGMENT 13 (Communication no. 212/2002, UN doc. CAT/C/34/D/212/2002). It was against this background that his remarks had to be seen; the applicant claimed that he had himself been subjected to torture following his arrest in July 1987. 38. Referring to the Court’s case-law on the subject of insults against a Head of State (see Colombani and Others v. France, no. 51279/99, §§ 66-69, ECHR 2002-V, and Pakdemirli v. Turkey, no. 35839/97, §§ 51-52, 22 February 2005), the applicant argued that the excessive protection afforded to the Crown under Spanish criminal law was incompatible with Article 10 of the Convention. Whereas in the case of ordinary individuals and other institutions an insult had to be characterised as serious in order for the person concerned to be prosecuted, in the case of the Crown any kind of insult sufficed and was punishable. The offence of serious insult against the Crown was unique in carrying a prison sentence (of six months to two years); under ordinary law and in the case of other institutions, the penalty for serious insult was a fine. The provisions in question therefore conferred on the Crown “a special privilege that [could not] be reconciled with modern practice and political conceptions” (the applicant referred to Colombani and Others, cited above, § 68). The applicant alluded to the legislative trends in Council of Europe member States, most of which dealt with attacks against the sovereign under the ordinary law. Hence, making insults against the King a criminal offence was not necessary in a democratic society, especially as the offences of criminal defamation and proffering insults provided Heads of State or monarchs with sufficient remedy against remarks that damaged their honour. 39. As to the proportionality of the penalty, the applicant stressed that from 8 June 2007 to 30 August 2008 he had served the prison sentence that had become enforceable after the Supreme Court had upheld his 2006 conviction for publicly defending terrorism. Referring to the Court’s case-law, according to which a prison sentence imposed for an offence committed in the context of political debate was compatible with freedom of expression only in exceptional circumstances (see Feridun Yazar v. Turkey, no. 42713/98, § 27, 23 September 2004), he submitted that there had been no grounds in the present case for imposing such a penalty, which in his view was manifestly disproportionate to the aim pursued. Lastly, he argued that the King had not suffered any harm and that no civil proceedings had been brought. (b) The Government 40. The Government contended that the applicant’s remarks would have constituted a serious slur on the honour of whoever happened to be the target, including of course the King. Describing someone as a torturer amounted to saying that the person concerned had violated the core values of the society of which he or she was a member and conveying a negative