this is what occurred to me, more context & nationality would be useful

In context, this is about a ten-year long difficult prison term

58. In its decision of 16 January 2010, BVerfG, 2 BvR 2299/09, the Federal Constitutional Court considered an extradition case where the offender faced “aggravated life imprisonment until death” (erschwerte lebenslängliche Freiheitsstrafe bis zum Tod) in Turkey. The German government had sought assurances that he would be considered for release and had received the reply that the President of Turkey had the power to remit sentences on grounds of chronic illness, disability, or old age. The court refused to allow extradition, finding that this power of release offered only a vague hope of release and was thus insufficient. Notwithstanding the need to respect foreign legal orders, if someone had no practical prospect of release such a sentence would be cruel and degrading (grausam und erniedrigend) and would infringe the requirements of human dignity provided for in Article 1.

a crime is aggravated, e.g. aggravated felony,
circumstances are aggravating ( or mitigating) as the case may be.

Only because I found the reference indicated below.

The two main components of this type of punishment in Turkey seem to be a) the prisoner is held in solitary confinement and b) there is no possibiloity to apply for parole and parole must not be granted. The other conditions are less dominant in the specific character of this punishment. I would propose to use a descriptive phrase that encapsules the main characteristics (and those that make this type of punishment so objectionable in Germany).

... may be sentenced to ten years of tightened imprisonment
or:
... could face ten years of toughened imprisonment conditions

etc..

Example from link below:

"In initial reactions, the Israeli prison administration tightened imprisonment conditions."

Multiple web references in connection with Turkey.

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Note added at 31 mins (2013-03-05 21:14:18 GMT)
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Turkey
ANTI-TERROR LAW
Article 5. Penalties of imprisonment and fines imposed according to the respective laws for those committing crimes as described in Articles 3 and 4 above shall be increased by one half. In doing so the penalties may exceed the maximum penalty for that or any other crime. However, in the case of rigorous imprisonment the penalty may not exceed 36 years’, in case of ordinary imprisonment 25 years’, and in case of light imprisonment 10 years’ imprisonment.
https://www.unodc.org/tldb/showDocument.do?lng=en&documentUi...
Sounds slightly weird in EN, but this appears to be the 'official' translation.


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Note added at 40 mins (2013-03-05 21:22:31 GMT)
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Dr Timm's reference: Egypt

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Note added at 1 hr (2013-03-05 22:09:05 GMT)
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Kim Metzger's reference: Egypt
Phil Goddard's reference: Wikipedia

Agree with your comment in Discussion Box. 'Aggravated' sounds arbitrary and pernicious - hardly the sort of adjective that a government or legal system would wish to be associated with.

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Note added at 14 hrs (2013-03-06 11:27:43 GMT)
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Hi Albert
The source is the United Nations. The language isn't brilliant, but neither are any of the sources for 'aggravated' or 'heavy'. Incidentally, that isn't a typo in the headline but a transcription error from scanning or the like. Anyway, I think you would be better off using one of the expanded, descriptive versions.
AJS

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Note added at 14 hrs (2013-03-06 11:41:23 GMT)
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It might be interesting to post this as a German-Turkish question, to get the back-translation, and then to repost it as Turkish to English. I think a lot of contributors here are under the impression that the German translation (i.e. using a past participle) is authoritative.
UN? EU? Both equally likely to produce authentic or unauthentic EN.

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Note added at 23 hrs (2013-03-06 20:33:16 GMT)
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Hi Albert
It appears that the Turkish speakers recognise both ‘ağırlaştırılmış hapis cezası’ and ‘ağır hapis cezası’ as legitimate wordings of the court sentence. Interestingly, when you google “10 yıl ağır hapis cezası” (whole phrase), you get 193,000 hits compared to just nine for “10 yıl ağırlaştırılmış hapis cezası”. Consequently, this would suggest that you need a translation of the adjective form ağır (schwer) rather than the past participle (-ed) / comparative (-er) form ağırlaştırılmış. Which of course brings hard, heavy, rigorous, arduous etc back into contention.
NB The above research is provided willingly and with no expectation of KudoZ success. I realise that you will probably wish to single out for reward the earliest reply (essentially agreeing with what you had already rejected) that has attracted four endorsements under the ‘most helpful’ criterion.
AJS


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Note added at 1 day16 hrs (2013-03-07 13:21:37 GMT)
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Amended/alternative proposal:
penal servitude
http://www.nedirnedemek.com/ağır-hapis-cezası-nedir-ağır-hap...

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Note added at 5 days (2013-03-11 11:51:30 GMT)
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Hi Albert
I am receiving automatically generated e-mails from the system asking me to close the parallel question: http://www.proz.com/kudoz/german_to_turkish/law_general/5127...
It would clearly be presumptuous of me to do so without seeing what the 'correct' answer is here (ağır/schwer/heavy or ağırlaştırılmış/erschwert/heavified).
Will you be closing this question yourself - using the 'most helpful criterion, however you choose to interpret that - or leaving it to the robot at the end of the fortnight?
Regards
AJS
PS: I have had another look at the UN text which you describe as being of "poor quality". Unfortunately, I cannot concur.

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Note added at 12 days (2013-03-18 01:28:57 GMT)
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Hello there,
This question will close automatically on Tuesday. The KudoZ robot will automatically award the points to 'aggravated imprisonment' which is currently on +5. To quote your own words when you launched this enquiry: "Aggravated imprisonment? Can't find a thing." The leading answer found an example that you could easily have found yourself by googling the phrase in double quote marks. You will in the meantime have received several automatically generated requests to close this question yourself and provide feedback. I certainly have for the parallel question. So what was the solution you chose? Was it indeed 'aggravated imprisonment', and was it the double intervention of Dr Timm that convinced you. Or was it Kim Metzger's Irish find?
Regards
AJS