ABSTRACT
Torture occurs in the darkest spaces of society, shielded from view by denial and subterfuge. Although the European Commission of Human Rights found that the techniques amounted to torture, the European Court of Human Rights took a different view. The high threshold for torture set by the Court has resonated in other jurisdictions and states of emergency over the years. Perhaps if the Court had not departed from the European Commission’s finding that the system rightly constituted torture, the Landau Commission would have been asking whether the individual techniques utilized in isolation met the threshold to inhuman and degrading treatment. False premises led the Court to set a high threshold to torture that would resonate in unexpected ways and unexpected places, such as Israel and the United States, in the intervening years. Yet audio recordings remain suppressed and were hidden from the European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights.
