decision in Loayza Tamayo V. Peru judgment of September 17, 1997. Series C No. 33, para 57, where the Inter-American Court held that: “the violation of the right to physical and psychological integrity of persons is a category of violation that has several gradation and embraces treatment ranging from torture to other types of humiliating or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with varying degrees of physical and psychological effects caused by endogenous and exogenous factors which must be proven in each specific situation. The European Court of Human right has declared that, even in the absence of physical injuries, psychological and moral suffering, accompanied by psychic disturbance during questioning, may be deemed inhuman treatment. The degrading aspect is characterized by the fear, anxiety and inferiority induced for the purpose of humiliating and degrading the victim and breaking his physical moral resistance”. The act of slapping, kicking, masking, blind folding, being stripped naked, handcuffing, unconsciousness/fainting, confined in a dark room and inadequate feeding come with their physical and psychological effects. A slap on its own amounts to humiliation with a considerable impact on the person receiving it in terms of his identity, sight, speech and hearing as the face is the center of his senses. This is capable of arousing in the victim a feeling of arbitrary treatment, injustice and powerlessness. In the case of BOUYID V. BELGIUM (2015) Application no. 23380/09 ECHR, the European Court of Human Rights found that persons under the control of the police or a similar authority, are in a situation of vulnerability as the authorities who are under a duty to protect them flout this duty by inflicting the humiliation of a slap. The Court also found that the fact that the slap may have been administered thoughtlessly by an officer who was exasperated by the victim’s disrespectful or provocative conduct was irrelevant as the Convention prohibits in absolute terms torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, irrespective of the conduct of the person concerned. The Court considers the acts of the Respondent as alleged diminished the dignity of the Applicants and was therefore a violation of Article 5 of the Charter. As to the conditions in the prison cells where the Applicants 24

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