No. 40154/98, § 30, 20 July 2004; Mikheyev v. Russia, No. 77617/01, §§ 104 - 105, 26 January 2006; and Dedovskiy and Others v. Russia, No. 7178/03, §§ 78 - 79, 15 May 2008). The Court, therefore, shall proceed to an examination of the severity of the treatment to which the applicant was subjected, on the basis of his submissions and the existing elements in the file.
ii. Assessment of the severity of ill-treatment
51. In determining whether a particular form of ill-treatment should be qualified as torture, consideration must be given to the distinction, embodied in Article 3, between this notion and that of inhuman or degrading treatment. The Court has already noted in previous cases that it was the intention that the Convention should, by means of this distinction, attach a special stigma to deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering. In addition to the severity of the treatment, there is a purposive element which defines torture in terms of the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering with the aim, inter alia, of obtaining information, inflicting punishment or intimidating (see Salman v. Turkey [GC], No. 21986/93, § 114, ECHR 2000-VII). According to the Court's consistent approach, treatment is considered "inhuman" if it is premeditated, applied for hours at a stretch and causes either actual bodily injury or intense physical or mental suffering. It is deemed to be "degrading" if it is such as to arouse in the victims feelings of fear, anguish and inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing them (see {Kudla}, cited above, § 92). The question whether the purpose of the treatment was to humiliate or debase the victim is a factor to be taken into account, but the absence of any such purpose cannot conclusively rule out a violation of Article 3 (see, for example, Peers v. Greece, No. 28524/95, § 74, ECHR 2001-III, and Kalashnikov v. Russia, No. 47095/99, § 101, ECHR 2002-VI).
52. The Court reiterates that it has found it established that the applicant was beaten up by the police officers and that as a result of those beatings he sustained injuries. The Court does not discern any circumstance which might have necessitated the use of violence against the applicant. It has never been argued that the applicant had resisted arrest, had attempted to escape or had not complied with lawful orders from the police officers. Furthermore, there is no indication that at any point during their arrest or subsequent detention at the police station he threatened the police officers, for example by openly carrying a weapon or by attacking them (see, by contrast, Necdet Bulut v. Turkey, No. 77092/01, § 25, 20 November 2007, and {Berliyski} v. Poland, Nos. 27715/95 and 30209/96, § 62, 20 June 2002). It thus appears that the use of force was retaliatory in nature and aimed at debasing the applicant and forcing him into submission. In addition, the treatment to which the applicant was subjected must have caused him mental and physical suffering, even though it did not apparently result in any long-term damage to health.
53. Accordingly, having regard to the nature and the extent of the applicant's injuries, the Court concludes that the State is responsible under Article 3 on account of the inhuman treatment to which the applicant was subjected by the police and that there has thus been a violation of that provision.
(c) Alleged inadequacy of the investigation
54. The Court reiterates that where an individual raises an arguable claim that he has been seriously ill-treated in breach of Article 3, that provision, read in conjunction with the State's general duty under Article 1 of the Convention to "secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in... [the] Convention", requires by implication that there should be an effective official investigation. An obligation to investigate "is not an obligation of resul
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