8 RUDYAK v. UKRAINE JUDGMENT B. Merits 1. Alleged ill-treatment by the police 49. The applicant reiterated his previous submissions that he had been ill-treated by the police in April 2005. 50. The Government submitted that the applicant’s complaints had been investigated and it had been concluded that the applicant had not been illtreated. The Government noted that the applicant’s complaints at the national level had been too general and had been submitted too late (for example, his complaint of 25 October 2005 in which he had complained of his ill-treatment for the first time). They also stated that the medical evidence submitted by the applicant was irrelevant, as it did not contain information about the time and manner in which the injuries had been inflicted on the applicant. Therefore, the Government concluded that there had not been a breach of the applicant’s rights guaranteed by Article 3 of the Convention. 51. The Court has stated on many occasions that Article 3 of the Convention enshrines one of the most fundamental values of a democratic society. It prohibits in absolute terms torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, irrespective of the circumstances or the victim’s behaviour (see, among other authorities, Labita v. Italy [GC], no 26772/95, § 119, ECHR 2000-IV). 52. To fall under Article 3 of the Convention, ill-treatment must attain a minimum level of severity. The assessment of this level is relative: it depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the duration of the treatment, its physical and mental effects and, in some cases, the gender, age and state of health of the victim (see Valašinas v. Lithuania, no. 44558/98, §§ 100-01, ECHR 2001-VIII). The Court has considered treatment to be “inhuman” because, inter alia, it was premeditated, was applied for hours at a stretch and caused either actual bodily injury or intense physical and mental suffering. It has deemed treatment to be “degrading” because it was such as to arouse in the victims feelings of fear, anguish and inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing them (see Kudła v. Poland [GC], no. 30210/96, § 92, ECHR 2000-XI). 53. The Court is sensitive to the subsidiary nature of its role and recognises that it must be cautious in taking on the role of a first-instance tribunal of fact, where this is not rendered unavoidable by the circumstances of a particular case (see, for example, McKerr v. the United Kingdom (dec.), no. 28883/95, 4 April 2000). Nonetheless, where allegations are made under Article 3 of the Convention the Court must apply a particularly thorough scrutiny, even if certain domestic proceedings and investigations have already taken place (see, mutatis mutandis, Ribitsch v. Austria,