bodied person would not have raised the same issues in relation to inhuman and degrading treatment.326 Definition of torture Article 1 of the UN Convention against Torture provides a widely-accepted definition of torture: For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. 327 Because of the stigma attached to torture, international human rights cases have confirmed that the threshold of severity for torture is extremely high. A major case on this issue before the European Court of Human Rights concerned interrogation techniques in counter-terrorism operations in Northern Ireland. The case was brought by Ireland against the United Kingdom. The complaint concerned the so-called five techniques practised by UK security forces in interrogating suspected IRA terrorists. These techniques included: • • • • • wall-standing; hooding; subjection to noise; deprivation of sleep; and deprivation of food and drink.328 The European Court of Human Rights, by a majority, classified the treatment as inhuman treatment rather than torture. Torture, that Court considered, has a particular stigma attached to it. The HRC, however, does not draw such a distinction between treatment amounting to torture and that which can be categorized as inhuman and degrading. In later cases, the European Court has held that, as the European Convention is a living instrument, treatment that may once have been considered to be inhuman or degrading, may now amount to torture.329 In one case the applicant, detained for drug trafficking, was found to have been tortured. He was subjected to a large number of intense blows all over his body, he was dragged along by his hair, forced to run along a corridor with police officers tripping him up. He was also urinated over and was threatened with a blow lamp and then a syringe. Key to this finding of torture was the treatment’s duration, severity and intentionality. It thus 326 ECtHR, Price v. UK, Application no. 33394/96, 10 July 2001, paras. 24-30. 327 However, see the more recent the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, op. cit., note 225 Article 2(e): its definition is less circumscribed. Torture is defined as “the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused; except that torture shall not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions”. 328 Op. cit., note 143, ECtHR, Ireland v. UK, paras. 96-104, 106-107 and 165-168. 329 The Court took “the view that the increasingly high standard being required in the area of the protection of human rights and fundamental liberties correspondingly and inevitably requires greater firmness in assessing breaches of the fundamental values of democratic societies”, ECtHR, Selmouni v. France, Application no. 25803/94, 28 July 1999, para. 101. Countering Terrorism, Protecting Human Rights 121