E/CN.4/1997/7 page 29 that Israeli law strictly prohibits all forms of torture or maltreatment. To prevent terrorism effectively while ensuring that basic human rights are protected, the authorities had adopted strict rules for handling interrogations to obtain crucial information on terrorist activities or organizations, while ensuring that suspects were not maltreated. The Landau Commission, in examining the issue in 1987, had determined that in dealing with terrorists representing a great threat to the State of Israel and its citizens, the use of a moderate degree of pressure, including physical pressure, to obtain information, such as that which would prevent imminent murder or would provide vital information on a terrorist organization, was unavoidable. The use of moderate pressure was permissible under international law, as evidenced by the European Court of Human Rights ruling that ill-treatment would have to “reach a certain severe level in order to be included in the ban” of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. 120. The Landau Commission had constrained the boundaries of permissible physical pressure to forbid disproportionate pressure or that which reached the level of physical torture or maltreatment or grievous harm to the detainee's honour which would deprive him of his human dignity, as follows. The use of less serious measures must be weighed against the degree of anticipated danger; physical and psychological means of pressure permitted for use by an interrogator must be defined and limited in advance through binding directives, the implementation of which must be strictly supervised; and those supervising the interrogators must see to it that disciplinary and, in serious cases, criminal proceedings are brought against interrogators deviating from what is permissible. The exact forms of pressure permissible to the interrogators had been kept secret so as not to limit their effectiveness. Safeguards had been put in place, including the mandatory investigation of claims of mistreatment and external supervision of the interrogation process by the State comptrollers and a special sub-committee of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset). The ICRC was able to meet with detainees in private within 14 days of arrest. A special ministerial committee also undertook periodic reviews of the guidelines. Pursuant to such a review, new guidelines issued in 1993 established that the need and justification for physical pressure must be established in every individual case. Observations 121. The following forms of pressure during interrogation appear so consistently (and have not been denied in judicial proceedings) that the Special Rapporteur assumes them to be sanctioned under the approved but secret interrogation practices: sitting in a very low chair or standing arced against a wall (possibly in alternation with each other); hands and/or legs tightly manacled; subjection to loud noise; sleep deprivation; hooding; being kept in cold air; violent shaking (an “exceptional” measure, used against 8,000 persons according to the late Prime Minister Rabin in 1995). Each of these measures on its own may not provoke severe pain or suffering. Together - and they are frequently used in combination - they may be expected to induce precisely such pain or suffering, especially if applied on a protracted basis of, say, several hours. In fact, they are sometimes apparently applied for days or even weeks on end. Under those circumstances, they can only be described as torture, which is not surprising given their