Chapter 8 • International Legal Standards for the Protection of Persons Deprived of Their Liberty In the Loayza Tamayo case, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights explained that “the violation of the right to physical and psychological integrity of persons is a category of violation that has several gradations and embraces treatment ranging from torture to other types of humiliation or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with varying degrees of physical and psychological effects caused by endogenous and exogenous factors which must be proven in each specific situation.”23 Referring to the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in the Irish and Ribitsch cases, the Inter-American Court added that “even in the absence of physical injuries, psychological and moral suffering, accompanied by psychic disturbance during questioning, may be deemed inhuman treatment. The degrading aspect is characterized by the fear, anxiety and inferiority induced for the purpose of humiliating and degrading the victim and breaking his physical and moral resistance. ... That situation is exacerbated by the vulnerability of a person who is unlawfully detained. ... Any use of force that is not strictly necessary to ensure proper behavior on the part of the detainee constitutes an assault on the dignity of the person ... , in violation of Article 5 of the American Convention. The exigencies of the investigation and the undeniable difficulties in the anti-terrorist struggle must not be allowed to restrict the protection of a person’s right to physical integrity.”24 ***** With regard to the prohibition of “torture or ... inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” in article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights has stated that the distinction between “torture” and “inhuman or degrading treatment” “derives principally from a difference in the intensity of the suffering inflicted”.25 In the view of the Court, “it appears ... that it was the intention that the Convention, with its distinction between ‘torture’ and ‘inhuman or degrading treatment’, should by the first of these terms attach a special stigma to deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering”.26 The Court has consistently emphasized the absolute prohibition under article 3, which shows that it “enshrines one of the fundamental values of the democratic societies making up the Council of Europe”.27 In view of “the object and purpose of 23 I-A Court HR, Case of Loayza Tamayo v. Peru, Judgment of September 17, 1997, in OAS doc. OAS/Ser.L/V/III.39, doc. 5, Annual Report of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights 1997, p. 211, para. 57. 24 Ibid., loc. cit. 25 Eur. Court HR, Case of Ireland v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 18 January 1978, Series A, No. 25, p. 66, para. 167. 26 Ibid., loc. cit. For a more recent case see Eur. Court HR, Aydin v. Turkey, judgment (Grand Chamber) of 25 September 1997, Reports 1997-VI, p. 1891, para. 82. 27 Eur. Court HR, Soering v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 7 July 1989, Series A, No. 161, p. 34, para. 88. 324 Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers