Report of the Polish Commissioner for Human Rights on the Activities of the National Mechanism for the Prevention ... ing and debasing them and possibly breaking their physical or moral resistance. At the same time, the Court repeatedly held that for punishment to be degrading, the humiliation or debasement involved must exceed a particular level and must, in any event, entail other elements beyond the mere fact of lawful treatment or punishment268. The case law of the ECHR and the activities of human rights defenders show that the understanding of the definition of torture is subject to dynamic change and constant evolution, and that new aspects continuously appear in relation to the prohibition itself269. Analysis of to-date judgments of the ECHR (1959-2015) shows that violations of Article 3 of the Convention accounted for approximately 15% of all the violations of the articles thereof (2465 cases); including 133 cases relating to torture270. Among the countries that most frequently violate Article 3 of the Convention are Russia and Turkey. In the cases against Poland, to-date the Court has found 45 violations of Article 3 of the Convention, including 2 cases of torture, 34 cases of inhuman and degrading treatment and 9 cases of failure to properly conduct an investigation. The two judgments relating to torture were issued in 2014 and concerned the treatment of two prisoners by CIA officers in black-site prisons in Poland (the prisoners were held for six months in the back-site intelligence facility in Stare Kiejkuty)271. The Court found that Poland had infringed Article 3 by allowing torture and ill-treatment to take place in its territory. In the first place, the Court pointed at the serious infringement in the form of the failure to effectively and diligently conduct an investigation with regard to the allegations of ill-treatment in the period of the CIA custody in Poland. The related proceedings began 6 years after the applicants had been detained and ill-treated, despite the fact that the authorities were aware of the nature and purpose of the CIA’s activities. According to the Court’s judgment, the detainees were subjected to torture, including two mock executions. The first one was made with an unloaded gun which was then reloaded next to the head of the applicant chained in the sitting position. The other one Cf. Piechowicz v. Poland (application no. 20071/07, judgment of 17.04.2012). Cf. Konwencja o Ochronie Praw Człowieka i Podstawowych Wolności. Tom I. Komentarz do artykułów 1-18 [Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Volume I. Commentary on Articles 1 to 18]. Edited by: L. Garlicki, C. H. Beck, Warsaw 2010. 270 The statistics are available on the ECHR website. 271 Cf. Al Nashiri v. Poland (application no. 28761/11, judgment of 24.07.2014) and Husayn (Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland (application no. 7511/13, judgment of 24.07.2014). 268 269 92