22 GÄFGEN v. GERMANY JUDGMENT 82. Referring, in particular, to Articles 1 and 15 of the United Nations Convention against Torture (see paragraph 64 above), the applicant argued that the treatment to which he had been subjected in order to force him to confess should be characterised as torture. (ii) The Government 83. As in their submissions before the Chamber, the Government recognised that, regrettably, Article 3 had been violated during the applicant’s questioning on 1 October 2002. They stressed, however, that the applicant had only been threatened with severe pain if he did not inform the police about J.’s whereabouts. They contested that there had been additional threats of sexual assault upon the applicant. They further contested that the injuries the applicant had suffered had been caused during the interrogation in question and that he had been forced to walk without shoes at Birstein. He had suffered skin lesions when he was arrested at Frankfurt am Main airport. They underlined that until now, the applicant had claimed that E. had hit him only once on the chest and that his head had only once hit the wall. The domestic courts had not found the additional threats or injuries to have been established. 84. The Government further pointed out that police officers D. and E. had resorted to the method of interrogation in question in order to save the life of J., which they had considered to be at great risk. They had not known that J. had already been killed at that time. (iii) The third-party interveners (α) J.’s parents 85. J.’s parents endorsed the Government’s submissions. They pointed out that the applicant’s various injuries, including the injury below his collarbone, were now for the first time alleged to have been inflicted during the interrogation on 1 October 2002. However, the applicant had previously admitted that he had already sustained those injuries during his arrest on 30 September 2002. This admission was contained in a book he had published in 2005 (Allein mit Gott – der Weg zurück (“Alone With God – The Way Back”), pp. 57-61), dealing, inter alia, with the criminal investigations and the trial against him. In a chapter entitled “The arrest”, the applicant reproduced a copy of the medical certificate issued by a police doctor on 4 October 2002 (see paragraph 21 above) in order to show which injuries had been inflicted on him during his arrest on 30 September 2002. That same certificate was now being used by him in order to support his claim that the injuries were sustained during his interrogation. His injuries were not, therefore, connected with his interrogation on 1 October 2002.

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