A/HRC/22/52 B. The legal framework 1. Gross or systematic human rights violations 22. In the counter-terrorism context, the expression “gross or systematic human rights violations”23 includes State-sanctioned torture in the course of (or for the purposes of) interrogation of terrorist suspects24; the authorized and systematic infliction of inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment on terrorist suspects 25; the transfer of suspects into the custody of another State where there is known to be a real risk of torture 26; enforced disappearance of terrorist suspects,27 including their temporary detention at unacknowledged secret detention sites,28 and other acts of State that involve systematic human rights violations that are calculated to place human beings beyond the reach of the legal protection that international human rights law is designed to guarantee.29 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 8 There has been consensus for more than two decades that torture, enforced disappearance and prolonged arbitrary detention amount to gross human rights violations: see the conclusions of the Seminar on the Right to Restitution, Compensation and Rehabilitation for Victims of Gross Violations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Maastricht, 11-15 March 1992. SIM Special No. 12, p.17. As to the status of the prohibition against torture as a peremptory norm of customary international law, see International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Prosecutor v. Furundzija (Judgment) 10 December 1996, (“Furundzija”), paras. 153 to 156; European Court of Human Rights, Al-Adsani v. United Kingdom, Judgment 21 November 2001, para. 61; Ex parte Pinochet (No. 3) [2000] 1 AC 147 at 198; see also UNCAT, op. cit., footnote 14, which provides a definition of torture as prohibited by the peremptory norm (Article 1), and requires States to take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent and punish acts of torture (Articles 2, 4, 7 and 12). UNCAT, op. cit., footnote 14, Article 16; United Nations Doc. CAT/C/USA/CO/2, op. cit., footnote 8, para. 25. See ECtHR, El- Masri v. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Application No. 39630/09, Judgment 13 December 2012, (“El-Masri”), paras. 212 to 222, and the authorities there cited. As to the status of enforced disappearance as a gross human rights violation see United Nations Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, 18 December 1992, A/RES/47/133, (“United Nations Declaration on Enforced Disappearance), Art. 1. See also InterAmerican Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, adopted 9 June 1995 at 24th Regular Session of the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly, preamble; see also ECtHR, Kurt v. Turkey, Application No. 2426/94, Judgment 25 May 1998, (“Kurt”), para. 124, (characterizing enforced disappearance as “a most grave violation”); and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Resolution 1463 (2005), Enforced Disappearances (describing such action on the part of a State as “a very serious human rights violation on a par with torture and murder”). See United Nations Joint Study on Secret Detention, op. cit., footnote 1, para. 28; United Nations Declaration on Enforced Disappearance, op. cit., footnote 27, Article 2 which defines “enforced disappearance” as “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which places such a person outside the protection of the law”. Observations on behalf of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to the ECtHR in El-Masri, op. cit., footnote 26, Geneva, 11 March 2011, at para. 1. The Special Rapporteur wishes to acknowledge the work of Chile Eboe-Osuji, the Senior Legal Adviser to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the international recognition of the right to truth, upon which he has drawn for the purposes of the present report.