• Press
  • Newsletter
  • Access to case files
  • Administrative action
  • Administrative court
  • Administrative law
  • Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA)
  • Amicus curiae brief
  • Civil action
  • Civil law
  • Command responsibility
  • Communication (ICC)
  • Complementarity principle
  • Constitutional complaint
  • Corporate criminal law
  • Crimes against humanity
  • Criminal complaint (Germany)
  • Customary international law
  • Dossier
  • Due diligence
  • Enforced disappearance
  • European Asylum Support Office (EASO)
  • European Convention on Human Rights
  • European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)
  • European Ombudsperson
  • Freedom of Information Acts
  • Gender-based violence
  • Geneva Conventions
  • Genocide
  • German Federal Public Prosecutor
  • Hard law/soft law
  • Individual complaints
  • International Criminal Court (ICC)
  • International criminal law
  • International Labour Organization (ILO)
  • Intertemporal principle
  • Investor-state dispute settlement
  • Monitoring process
  • Monitoring report
  • National action plan on business and human rights
  • OECD complaint
  • OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises
  • Pinochet Effect
  • Postcolonial legal criticism
  • Preliminary examination
  • Public interest litigation
  • Public international law
  • Pushback
  • Regional court (Germany)
  • Sexual violence
  • Special tribunal
  • Strategic litigation
  • Structural investigation
  • Transitional justice
  • UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
  • UN Convention against Torture
  • UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
  • UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
  • UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
  • UN Special Rapporteur
  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  • Universal jurisdiction
  • War crimes
  • Whistleblower

Term

UN Convention against Torture

The UN Convention against Torture aims to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It was adopted in 1984 and supplements the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions. Under the convention states are obliged to prevent and punish acts of torture.

Bahrain

Torture allegations against Bahraini Attorney General

Torture

Bahrain-born British citizen Jaafar al-Hasabi submitted a criminal complaint in Dublin against Bahraini Attorney General Ali Bin al-Buainain. Al-Hasabi was detained and tortured in Bahrain in 2010. Since then, he tries to bring those responsible to court.

read more

USA

UN Committee against Torture refuses to examine Belgium’s role in torture of former Guantánamo detainee

Guantánamo

Belgium failed to investigate and prevent torture in US detention camp Guantánamo. Former detainee and Belgian citizen Zemmouri together with ECCHR argues that Belgian officials were complicit in the abuse.

read more

USA

Torture in Guantánamo: Spain closes investigations into “Bush Six”

Guantánamo

In March 2009, ECCHR partner lawyer Gonzalo Boye filed a criminal complaint against six former US officials of the Bush administration regarding their accountability for violations of international law, including war crimes and torture. The US officials became known as the “Bush Six.”

read more

USA

ECCHR supports “extraordinary rendition” case

Torture

ECCHR sumbitted an amici curiae brief in order to support the compensation claim in the Arar case. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was arrested and abducted by US officials in 2002 and brought to Syria. During his one-year detention he suffered torture and was imprisoned under inhumane conditions.

read more

USA

Criminal complaint against Gerorge W Bush

Torture

As a signatory of the Convention against Torture, the US is obliged to prosecute for these crimes. Nevertheless, there is evidence concerning the torture program after 11 September 2001 with a particular focus on the liability of high ranking US officials, including former President Bush.

read more

USA

The Rumsfeld torture cases

Torture

Between 2004 and 2007, three complaints were filed in Germany and in France against members of the US Government, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and members of the military forces in connection with war crimes, torture and other criminal acts in the military prisons of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.

read more

USA

The El Haski case

Guantánamo

Moroccan citizen El Haski was convicted to imprisonment in 2004 in Belgium for several offences committed with regard to an alleged terrorist group. At his conviction, witness testimony from Morocco was used which, according to El Haski, was procured by torture.

read more

USA

Germany: Criminal Complaint against CIA Director Gina Haspel

Torture

ECCHR has filed a criminal complaint with the German Federal Public Prosecutor calling for investigations into Gina Haspel’s role in the torture of detainees at a CIA secret prison in Thailand in 2002. Haspel was appointed director of the CIA by President Donald Trump in May 2018.

read more