GÄFGEN v. GERMANY JUDGMENT 33 criminal-law provisions penalising practices that are contrary to Article 3 (compare, mutatis mutandis, M.C. v. Bulgaria, no. 39272/98, §§ 150, 153 and 166, ECHR 2003-XII; Nikolova and Velichkova, cited above, § 57; and Çamdereli, cited above, § 38). 118. With regard to the requirement for compensation to remedy a breach of Article 3 at national level, the Court has repeatedly found that, in addition to a thorough and effective investigation, it is necessary for the State to have made an award of compensation to the applicant, where appropriate, or at least to have given him or her the possibility of seeking and obtaining compensation for the damage he or she sustained as a result of the ill-treatment (see, in detail, the references in paragraph 116 above). The Court has already had occasion to indicate in the context of other Convention Articles that an applicant’s victim status may depend on the level of compensation awarded at domestic level, having regard to the facts about which he or she complains before the Court (see, for instance, Normann v. Denmark (dec.), no. 44704/98, 14 June 2001, and Scordino (no. 1), cited above, § 202, in respect of a complaint under Article 6, or Jensen and Rasmussen v. Denmark (dec.), no. 52620/99, 20 March 2003, in respect of a complaint under Article 11). This finding applies, mutatis mutandis, to complaints concerning a breach of Article 3. 119. In cases of willful ill-treatment the breach of Article 3 cannot be remedied only by an award of compensation to the victim. This is so because, if the authorities could confine their reaction to incidents of willful ill-treatment by State agents to the mere payment of compensation, while not doing enough to prosecute and punish those responsible, it would be possible in some cases for agents of the State to abuse the rights of those within their control with virtual impunity, and the general legal prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, despite its fundamental importance, would be ineffective in practice (see, among many other authorities, Krastanov, cited above, § 60; Çamdereli, cited above, § 29; and Vladimir Romanov, cited above, § 78). (ii) Application of these principles to the present case 120. The Court thus has to examine, firstly, whether the national authorities have acknowledged, either expressly or in substance, the breach of the Convention. It notes in this connection that in the criminal proceedings against the applicant, the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court, in its decision dated 9 April 2003, expressly stated that the threat to cause the applicant pain in order to extract a statement from him had not only constituted a prohibited method of interrogation under Article 136a of the Code of Criminal Procedure; the threat had also disregarded Article 3 of the Convention, which underlay that provision of the Code (see paragraph 26 above). Likewise, the Federal Constitutional Court, referring to the Regional Court’s finding of a violation of Article 3, observed that the