I then have probably misunderstood what was meant by, "an effort to minimize the action." To me the inflated narrative they construct is to maximize and exaggerate.
They exaggerate as sarcasm which actually minimizes Knox's claims.
Knox claims she was "smacked on the back of the head" which the PGP exaggerate to claims of "torture" which Knox has never claimed. This is the PGP way of making fun of Knox's claims which minimizes it.
The language and its meaning describing the police treatment of Knox is important.
As Stacyhs points out, the guilters use the term "torture", a word not used by Knox or her lawyers in their application to the ECHR, as a sarcastic attack on her allegations and her actual experience of mistreatment by the police.
The implication of the guilters is that a few slaps on the head, as well as the other police offenses including but not limited to shouting, threats, lies, misrepresentations, mistranslations, and suggestions that Knox had amnesia, should not and could not have caused Knox to agree to sign a false statement.
It's important to understand that the kind of mistreatment experienced by Knox is categorized by the ECHR as "inhuman and degrading treatment" rather than as "torture", and thus falls within the range of mistreatment prohibited by Article 3 of the Convention.
The definitions of "torture", "inhuman treatment", and "degrading treatment" are provided, somewhat loosely, in ECHR case-law.
Bouyid v. Belgium 23380/09[GC] 28/09/2015 is an important and relevant case in which the ECHR found that police slapping - without justification - of persons present in a police station, one there for an identity check and the other for questioning, was a violation of Convention Article 3.
The judgment in the Bouyid case provides insight into how the ECHR would consider Knox's allegation. In brief summary, the ECHR found that the unjustified slapping of a person by a police officer (or similar authority), especially when that person was under police control, was an affront to human dignity. Such an affront to human dignity was necessarily degrading treatment.
Furthermore, even earlier ECHR case-law established the importance of various factors, such as the intent of the mistreatment administered by police and the status (sex, age, etc.) of the person mistreated. Mistreatment of a person to extract a false (or even a true) statement or confession would be a significant factor indicating a violation of Article 3.
Here are some relevant excerpts from the Bouyid v. Belgium judgment (inline citations omitted for clarity):
"86. 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 depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the duration of the treatment, its physical or mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age and state of health of the victim. Further factors include the purpose for which the ill-treatment was inflicted, together with the intention or motivation behind it, although the absence of an intention to humiliate or debase the victim cannot conclusively rule out a finding of a violation of Article 3. Regard must also be had to the context in which the ill-treatment was inflicted, such as an atmosphere of heightened tension and emotions.
87. Ill-treatment that attains such a minimum level of severity usually involves actual bodily injury or intense physical or mental suffering.
However, even in the absence of these aspects, where treatment humiliates or debases an individual, showing a lack of respect for or diminishing his or her human dignity, or arouses feelings of fear, anguish or inferiority capable of breaking an individual’s moral and physical resistance, it may be characterised as degrading and also fall within the prohibition set forth in Article 3. It should also be pointed out that it may well suffice that the victim is humiliated in his own eyes, even if not in the eyes of others.
88. Furthermore, in view of the facts of the case, the Court considers it particularly important to point out that,
in respect of a person who is deprived of his liberty, or, more generally, is confronted with law-enforcement officers, any recourse to physical force which has not been made strictly necessary by his own conduct diminishes human dignity and is, in principle, an infringement of the right set forth in Article 3.
89. The word “dignity” appears in many international and regional texts and instruments. Although the Convention does not mention that concept – which nevertheless appears in the Preamble to Protocol No. 13 to the Convention, concerning the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances –
the Court has emphasised that respect for human dignity forms part of the very essence of the Convention, alongside human freedom.
90. Moreover,
there is a particularly strong link between the concepts of “degrading” treatment or punishment within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention and respect for “dignity”. In 1973
the European Commission of Human Rights stressed that in the context of Article 3 of the Convention the expression “degrading treatment” showed that the general purpose of that provision was to prevent particularly serious interferences with human dignity. The Court, for its part, made its first explicit reference to this concept in the Tyrer judgment, concerning not “degrading treatment” but “degrading punishment”. In finding that the punishment in question was degrading within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention, the Court had regard to the fact that
“although the applicant did not suffer any severe or long-lasting physical effects, his punishment – hereby he was treated as an object in the power of the authorities – constituted an assault on precisely that which it is one of the main purposes of Article 3 to protect, namely a person’s dignity and physical integrity”. Many subsequent judgments have highlighted the close link between the concepts of “degrading treatment” and respect for “dignity”."
