18
JALLOH v. GERMANY JUDGMENT
suffered further damage to his health. However, he had not produced any
documentary evidence to support his allegations.
B. The Court’s assessment
1. Relevant principles
67. According to the Court’s well-established case-law, ill-treatment
must attain a minimum level of severity if it is to fall within the scope of
Article 3. The assessment of this minimum level of severity is relative; it
depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the duration of the
treatment, its physical and mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age
and state of health of the victim (see, inter alia, Price v. the United
Kingdom, no. 33394/96, § 24, ECHR 2001-VII; Mouisel v. France,
no. 67263/01, § 37, ECHR 2002-IX; and Naumenko v. Ukraine,
no. 42023/98, § 108, 10 February 2004). Allegations of ill-treatment must
be supported by appropriate evidence (see, mutatis mutandis, Klaas v.
Germany, 22 September 1993, § 30, Series A no. 269). To assess this
evidence, the Court adopts the standard of proof “beyond reasonable doubt”
but adds that such proof may follow from the coexistence of sufficiently
strong, clear and concordant inferences or of similar unrebutted
presumptions of fact (see Ireland v. the United Kingdom, 18 January 1978,
§ 161 in fine, Series A no. 25, and Labita v. Italy [GC], no. 26772/95, § 121,
ECHR 2000-IV).
68. Treatment has been held by the Court to be “inhuman” because, inter
alia, it was premeditated, was applied for hours at a stretch and caused
either actual bodily injury or intense physical and mental suffering (see
Labita, cited above, § 120). Treatment has been considered “degrading”
when it was such as to arouse in its victims feelings of fear, anguish and
inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing them and possibly breaking
their physical or moral resistance (see Hurtado v. Switzerland, 28 January
1994, opinion of the Commission, § 67, Series A no. 280), or when it was
such as to drive the victim to act against his will or conscience (see, for
example, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands v. Greece (the
“Greek case”), nos. 3321/67, 3322/67, 3323/67 and 3344/67, Commission’s
report of 5 November 1969, Yearbook 12, p. 186, and Keenan v. the United
Kingdom, no. 27229/95, § 110, ECHR 2001-III). Furthermore, in
considering whether treatment is “degrading” within the meaning of
Article 3, one of the factors which the Court will take into account is the
question whether its object was to humiliate and debase the person
concerned, although the absence of any such purpose cannot conclusively
rule out a finding of a violation of Article 3 (see Raninen v. Finland,
16 December 1997, § 55, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-VIII;
Peers v. Greece, no. 28524/95, §§ 68 and 74, ECHR 2001-III; and Price,
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