50 United Nations Convention Against Torture and its Optional Protocol detained there for periods of up to thirty-​five days. In certain cases, persons under interrogation were forced to spend the night in the interrogation rooms lying on the floor and handcuffed. Although the precise conditions in these places of detention are not revealed in the summary account, the Committee members expressed the view that a long period of detention in the cells of the detention places referred to above, ie two weeks, amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment. Longer periods of detention in those cells amount to torture. Moreover, the practice of forcing persons under interrogation to spend the night in the interrogation rooms lying handcuffed on the floor also amounts to torture.134 No arguments have been developed for this surprising and inconsistent legal qualification. Why does one night lying handcuffed on the floor of an interrogation room per se amount to torture whereas spending many months in a maximum security prison at an altitude of 4,500 metres without heating and electricity and with freezing temperatures amount ‘only’ to cruel and inhuman treatment? Why does the length of detention (less or more than two weeks) change the qualification from inhuman and degrading treatment to torture? Is it the severity of pain and suffering or the purpose that changes? 89  The Committee thus seems to decide based on the specific circumstances of each case, whether an inflicted treatment amounts to ‘severe pain and suffering’ in line with Article 1, without providing any detailed analysis or assessment, why it would find or not find that a treatment fulfils the legal qualification.135 Sometimes this assessment does not seem to be fully consistent. 90  It is important to underline that the level of pain and suffering is relative and may differ subjectively.136 As the IACHR has stipulated, due to endogenous and exogenous factors (eg duration of torture and other forms of ill-​treatment, age, sex, health, context, etc), the physical and mental consequences of torture and other forms of ill-​treatment can vary in intensity for every person.137 91  ‘Severe pain and suffering’ relates to physical and mental suffering equally, with psychological torture and other forms of ill-​treatment being ‘by no means less severe than physical abuse’.138 This is very important, as mental suffering of the same intensity than physical pain and suffering can be inflicted without actual physical contact.139 Consequently, the Committee has confirmed that acts which may lead to severe mental suffering, such as sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, or manipulation techniques, may amount to torture, because they fulfil the severity criterion outlined in Article 1.140 Referring to the 2002 authorization of the use of certain interrogation techniques that have resulted in the death of some detainees during interrogation, the Committee concluded that the United States should rescind any interrogation technique, including methods involving sexual humiliation, ‘waterboarding’, ‘short shackling’, and using dogs to induce fear, that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, in all places of detention under its de facto effective control, in order to comply   ibid, para 178.   Also see AI, Combating Torture and other Ill-​Treatment: A Manual for Action (AI 2016) 68. 136   SRT (Nowak) ‘Interim report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment’ (2008) UN Doc A/​63/​175, para 47. 137   Lysias Fleury et al v Haiti, Series C No 236 (n 116) para 73. Also see A/​72/​178 (n 99) para 28. 138   A/​HRC/​13/​39 (n 99)  para 46. This has also been confirmed by medical experts, eg see Başoğlu (n 120) 37. 139  AI, Combating Torture (n 135) 67. 140   CAT, ‘Report of the Committee Against Torture’ (1997) UN Doc A/​52/​44, para 250. 134 135 Zach