İLHAN v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 21 “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” A. The submissions of the parties 81. The applicant, agreeing with the unanimous opinion of the Commission, submitted that Abdüllatif İlhan was subjected to treatment in violation of Article 3. He referred both to the severity of the injuries caused to Abdüllatif İlhan by being beaten with rifle butts and kicked and to the failure to bring him promptly to the hospital despite his obvious injuries. 82. The applicant also argued, referring to the Court's judgment of 28 October 1998 in the case of Assenov and Others v. Bulgaria (Reports 1998-VIII, p. 3290, §§ 102-03), that the authorities failed to conduct any effective or adequate investigation into the ill-treatment to which his brother was subjected. This disclosed a separate breach of Article 3, as found by a majority of the Commission in its report. 83. The Government submitted that the applicant's complaints were wholly unfounded. Abdüllatif İlhan's injuries were caused by his accidental fall while trying to run away from the security forces. There was no failure on the part of the public prosecutor in investigating the incident. If Abdüllatif İlhan had had any complaint, he could have brought it to the attention of the public prosecutor or the Mardin Justice of the Peace Court. He had not done so, however. B. The Court's assessment 1. Concerning the alleged ill-treatment 84. The Court recalls that ill-treatment must attain a minimum level of severity if it is to fall within the scope of Article 3. The assessment of this minimum is relative: it depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the duration of the treatment, its physical and/or mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age and state of health of the victim (see, among other authorities, the Tekin v. Turkey judgment of 9 June 1998, Reports 1998-IV, p. 1517, § 52). 85. Further, 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. As noted in previous cases, it appears 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 (see the Ireland v. the United Kingdom judgment of