Chapter 8 • International Legal Standards for the Protection of Persons Deprived of Their Liberty The Court was thus “... satisfied that the accumulation of acts of physical and mental violence inflicted on the applicant and the especially cruel act of rape to which she was subjected amounted to torture in breach of Article 3 of the Convention”.31 ***** In a case against Peru, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was also confronted with a case of rape by military personnel. Although the woman was not detained as such, she was helpless in the hands of these individuals who had abducted – and eventually killed – her husband. On the night of her husband’s abduction from their home, Ms. Mejía was raped twice by a military officer.32 The Commission presumed the alleged facts to be true; in its view “the credibility of the version presented by the petitioner” was corroborated by various reports of intergovernmental and non-governmental bodies that had documented “numerous rapes of women in Peru by members of the security forces in emergency areas and in which the specific case of Raquel Mejía” had been mentioned and described.33 Having thus presumed the responsibility of troops of the Peruvian Army in the commission of the abuses against Ms. Mejía and also the non-existence in Peru of effective domestic remedies, the Commission held that “Current international law establishes that sexual abuse committed by members of security forces, whether as a result of a deliberate practice promoted by the State or as a result of failure by the State to prevent the occurrence of this crime, constitutes a violation of the victims’ human rights, especially the right to physical and mental integrity.”34 In support of this view it referred inter alia to articles 27 and 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, article 76 of Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Conventions, article 4(2) of Protocol Additional II to the Geneva Conventions and article 5 of the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court.35 The Commission then interpreted the notion of torture in article 5 of the American Convention on Human Rights in the light of the definition thereof contained in the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture; on the basis of this definition, for torture to exist, the following three elements had to be combined: v “it must be an intentional act through which physical and mental pain and suffering is inflicted on a person”; v “it must be committed with a purpose”; and v “it must be committed by a public official or by a private person acting at the instigation of the former”.36 31 Ibid., p. 1892, para. 86. 32 I-A Comm. HR, Report No. 5/96, Case 10.970 v. Peru, March 1, 1996, in OAS doc. OEA/Ser.L/V/II.91, doc. 7 rev., Annual Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 1995, pp. 158-159. 33 Ibid., pp. 174-175. 34 Ibid., p. 182. 35 Ibid., pp. 182-184. 36 Ibid., p. 185. 326 Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers