SOERING v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT 24 AS TO THE LAW I. ALLEGED BREACH OF ARTICLE 3 (art. 3) 80. The applicant alleged that the decision by the Secretary of State for the Home Department to surrender him to the authorities of the United States of America would, if implemented, give rise to a breach by the United Kingdom of Article 3 (art. 3) of the Convention, which provides: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." A. Applicability of Article 3 (art. 3) in cases of extradition 81. The alleged breach derives from the applicant’s exposure to the socalled "death row phenomenon". This phenomenon may be described as consisting in a combination of circumstances to which the applicant would be exposed if, after having been extradited to Virginia to face a capital murder charge, he were sentenced to death. 82. In its report (at paragraph 94) the Commission reaffirmed "its caselaw that a person’s deportation or extradition may give rise to an issue under Article 3 (art. 3) of the Convention where there are serious reasons to believe that the individual will be subjected, in the receiving State, to treatment contrary to that Article (art. 3)". The Government of the Federal Republic of Germany supported the approach of the Commission, pointing to a similar approach in the case-law of the German courts. The applicant likewise submitted that Article 3 (art. 3) not only prohibits the Contracting States from causing inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to occur within their jurisdiction but also embodies an associated obligation not to put a person in a position where he will or may suffer such treatment or punishment at the hands of other States. For the applicant, at least as far as Article 3 (art. 3) is concerned, an individual may not be surrendered out of the protective zone of the Convention without the certainty that the safeguards which he would enjoy are as effective as the Convention standard. 83. The United Kingdom Government, on the other hand, contended that Article 3 (art. 3) should not be interpreted so as to impose responsibility on a Contracting State for acts which occur outside its jurisdiction. In particular, in their submission, extradition does not involve the responsibility of the extraditing State for inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which the extradited person may suffer outside the State’s jurisdiction. To begin with, they maintained, it would be straining the