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Facts: the British government had introduced detention without trial in Northern Ireland. This directly infringed the key principle in Article 5, for which a derogation had been lodged (under Article 15). The more important aspect of the case for present purposes was that, while subject to detention, individuals were subjected to the so-called ‘five techniques’, which included wall-standing, hooding and deprivation of sleep and food. The case was about whether these interrogation practices engaged Article 3, and if so, whether they amounted to torture or the less serious variant of inhuman and degrading treatment. (Note that it is not possible for a state to derogate from either Article 3 or 2.) It is notable in this case that the distinction made by the Strasbourg Court between torture and a lesser breach of Article 3 was that the former, in order to meet the high threshold and ‘special stigma’ implicit in the term, had to involve an ‘aggravated and deliberate’ form of treatment causing ‘serious and cruel suffering’. There appears also to have been some differentiation between infliction of actual bodily injury and of psychological pressure and humiliation, though it is arguable that a more modern assessment of these types of interrogation technique would take a stricter approach with regard to the psychological impact on detainees.

The Republic of Ireland v The United Kingdom (1979-80) 2 EHRR 25