minister for Brandenburg, made the direct link to terrorism, arguing that “if a large number of people is threatened by terrorists, one would also have to consider torture.”44 The European Court of Human Rights, called upon to examine whether Germany had violated Gäfgen’s rights under articles 3 (torture prohibition) and 6 (right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights, firmly rejected this logic. In its June 2008 judgment, the Court underscored that “the prohibition on ill-treatment of a person in order to extract information from him applies irrespective of the reasons for which the authorities wish to extract a statement, be it to save a person’s life or to further criminal investigations.”45 The Court found in that ruling that there had been no violation of the article 3 or article 6 of the Convention. However, the Grand Chamber of the Court, in a June 1, 2010, judgment, found there had indeed been a violation of article 3 because the “almost token fines,” then suspended, imposed on Daschner and his subordinate constituted a “manifestly disproportionate” punishment without the “necessary deterrent effect in order to prevent further violations of the prohibition of ill-treatment in future difficult situations.”46 The Grand Chamber also considered that Daschner’s subsequent promotion “raised serious doubts as to whether the authorities’ reaction reflected, adequately, the seriousness involved in a breach of article 3.”47 The modified version of the ticking bomb scenario, which, as discussed below, has been cited by German and UK authorities to justify intelligence cooperation with countries that torture invents a situation in which authorities receive urgent information, obtained in a foreign country through torture, alleging a bomb in a public place that will explode shortly. It differs from the classic ticking bomb in that the torture has already taken place, and at the hands of a foreign government. Human Rights Watch agrees that in the hypothetical example the duty to prevent terrorist attacks would indeed impose an obligation on the police or security services to act upon such information, still recognizing the inherent unreliability of evidence obtained by torture. 44 “Schönbohm: Folter bei Terrorgefahr vorstellbar,” Berliner Zeitung, February 26, 2003, http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2003/0226/brandenburg/0129/index.html (accessed November 10, 2009). 45 European Court of Human Rights, Gäfgen v. Germany, no. 22978/05, 30 June, 2008, available at www.echr.coe.int, para. 69. 46 European Court of Human Rights [GC], Gäfgen v. Germany, no. 22978/05, 1 June 2010, available at www.echr.coe.int, para.124. The Grand Chamber agreed with the lower chamber that there had been no violation of article 6. 47 Ibid, para. 125. “No Questions Asked” 18