A/HRC/12/48 page 249 detaining authority or occupying Power may take with respect to protected persons against whom no criminal proceedings have been initiated. Internment is a preventive administrative measure and cannot be considered a penal sanction.564 Recourse to the measure may be had only if the security of the State makes it “absolutely necessary” (art. 42) or “for imperative reasons of security” (art. 78). 1170. The Mission does not consider that the information it has received supports defining the treatment described above as internment. 1171. The rounding-up of large groups of civilians and their prolonged detention under the circumstances described above constitute a collective penalty on those persons in violation of article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and article 50 of the Hague Regulations. Such treatment amounts to measures of intimidation and terrorism, prohibited under article 33 and a grave breach of the Convention that constitutes a war crime. 1172. By holding the detainees in sandpits without privacy, the Israeli soldiers failed to ensure respect for their persons or to treat them humanely as required by article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The information before the Mission suggests that this treatment could not be justified as necessary “measures of control and security.” This treatment also constituted outrages on personal dignity, humiliating and degrading treatment contrary to the Geneva Conventions, common article 3, and Additional Protocol I, article 75 (2) (b). The abuse, which required a considerable degree of planning and control, was sufficiently severe to constitute inhuman treatment within the meaning of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and thus a grave breach of the said Convention that would constitute a war crime. 1173. “Women shall be the object of special respect”, in accordance with article 76 of Additional Protocol I. The Mission finds, on the information before it, that the treatment of the women in the sandpits, where they endured especially distressing circumstances, was contrary to this provision and would also constitute a war crime. 1174. The Mission has received information relating to the particular treatment received by some witnesses, such as shackling, severe beatings during detention and interrogation, being held in foul conditions or solitary confinement, which added to their already profound sense of degradation. Such treatment violates article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits physical or moral coercion against protected persons, “in particular to gain information from them”. This would also constitute a war crime. 1175. Furthermore, on the basis of this information, the Mission considers that the severe beatings, constant humiliating and degrading treatment and detention in foul conditions allegedly suffered by individuals in the Gaza Strip under the control of the Israelis and in detention in Israel, would constitute torture, and a grave breach under article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Such violations also constitute war crimes. 564 ICRC Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention.