• those potentially implicated in torture should be removed from any position of control or power, whether direct or indirect, over complainants, witnesses and their families, as well as those conducting the investigation. Protection from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment: how does it work? Not all types of harsh treatment will fall within the scope of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as protected by Article 3 ECHR or Article 7 ICCPR. To fall within the ambit of these treaties, the conduct must attain a “minimum level of severity”.323 Although all of these types of conduct are prohibited, distinctions are often drawn between torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. Even though it can be argued that punishment per se has an inherent element that includes humiliation, this would not in itself amount to degrading treatment. There is a distinction between punishment in general and punishment that is designed to be inhuman and degrading. Corporal punishment, for example, will amount to degrading punishment.324 Factors that may be relevant to identifying whether treatment violates protection from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment Whether the threshold of either torture or inhuman or degrading treatment of punishment has been reached will depend on all the circumstances of the case. To draw a distinction between torture on the one hand, and inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment on the other, is to some extent to make a distinction without a difference, since all are forbidden under international human rights law. Nevertheless, there is a special and particular stigma attached to torture and there are some legal consequences to the distinction. For example, the CAT requires states to prosecute or extradite individuals accused of torture, but does not have the same stipulation for those who inflicted inhuman or degrading treatment. A number of other legal stipulations of the CAT are also limited to torture. In making the distinction, relevant factors will include duration of the treatment, its severity, the degree of pain inflicted, its physical or mental effects and, in some instances, the sex, age and state of health of the victim.325 For example, conditions of detention in a police station amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment for one detainee, who was confined to a wheelchair and also suffered from recurrent kidney problems. While there was not evidence of any positive intention to humiliate or debase the detainee, the same conditions for an able- 323 “The assessment of this minimum is, in the nature of things, relative; it depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the duration of the treatment, its physical or mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age and state of health of the victim, etc.”, op. cit., note 143, ECtHR, Ireland v. UK, para. 162. 324 For this distinction, see the ECtHR judgments in the cases of Tyrer and Costello-Roberts, in particular: “The circumstances of the applicant’s punishment [Mr. Costello-Roberts] may be distinguished from those of Mr Tyrer’s which was found to be degrading within the meaning of Article 3. Mr Costello-Roberts was a young boy punished in accordance with the disciplinary rules in force within the school in which he was a boarder. This amounted to being slippered three times on his buttocks through his shorts with a rubber-soled gym shoe by the headmaster in private. Mr Tyrer, on the other hand, was a young man sentenced in the local juvenile court to three strokes of the birch on the bare posterior. His punishment was administered some three weeks later in a police station where he was held by two policemen whilst a third administered the punishment, pieces of the birch breaking at the first stroke”, op. cit., note 171, ECtHR, Costello-Roberts v. UK, para. 31. 325 Op. cit., note 143, ECtHR, Ireland v. UK, para. 162. 120 Countering Terrorism, Protecting Human Rights