2 continued the elaboration of a broad concept of victim of violation. This judgment progresses in this sense, and distinguishes between, on the one hand, the infringement of the rights of Efraín Bámaca Velásquez and, on the other, the violation of the rights of his next of kin and of Jennifer Harbury. It is clear that some violations directly and immediately affect the former; and others affect Jennifer Harbury and the closest members of Mr. Bámaca's family, who also suffered the consequences - effects on the person with legal effects - of the violation of his rights. 5. It is probable that the Court will re-examine this issue in future decisions. To that end, it could consider that the person who suffers impairment of his fundamental rights as the immediate effect of the violation, is a direct victim; between the victim and the impairment of his rights there is a relation of cause and effect (in the juridical sense of the connection), without intermediary or interruption. Conversely, an indirect victim would be the person who experiences the impairment of his right as an immediate and necessary consequence, according to the circumstances, of the injury suffered by the direct victim. Under this hypothesis, the effect on the latter would be the source of the violation experienced by the indirect victim. The technical distinction between the two categories does not imply that one of them has a higher rank for the purposes of the protection of the law. They are equally protected by the Convention and may be dealt with in the judgment, both to consider them, substantively, as passive subjects of a violation with claims to reparations, and to attribute them procedural competency, generically and without distinction. 6. In this respect, that is, with regard to the violation of Article 5 of the Convention, the Court has begun, briefly and almost tangentially for the moment, to examine the difference between torture, on the one hand, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, on the other (para. 154, where it is also recalled that all these acts “are strictly prohibited under any circumstance”, as the Court has declared in the Cantoral Benavides case. Judgment on merits, para. 95), and the three components of the latter category can also be the object of delimitation and definition. Thus, in this case, the Court has considered that certain acts denounced “were deliberately prepared and inflicted, in order to obtain information that was relevant for the Army from Efraín Bámaca Velázquez. According to the testimonies received in this proceeding, “the alleged victim was submitted to grave acts of physical and mental violence during a prolonged period of time for the said purposes and, thus, intentionally placed in a situation of anguish and intense physical suffering, which can only be qualified as both physical and mental torture” (para. 158). 7. The difference between torture and other acts assembled under Article 5(2) of the Convention, is not to be found in the pre-ordained and deliberate nature of some of them, because, generally, they all have these characteristics; or in the purpose for which they are inflicted, which may also be common to all. The description of torture contained in conventions on this subject - the universal and the American - offers elements that also characterize cruel and inhuman treatment. In other words, the latter could be differentiated from the former by the gravity of the suffering caused to the victim, by the intensity of the pain - physical or moral - that is inflicted, by the characteristics of the prejudicial action and of the reaction that this causes in the person who suffers it. 8. For example, the Court maintained that what Mrs. Harbury and the next of kin of Mr. Bámaca Velásquez suffered, as a result of the obstacles they confronted in