In its judgment, published on Wednesday, the court said there was evidence of widespread and systemic use of sexual violence, accompanied by acts of torture, such as beatings, strangling or electric shocks. Civilians and prisoners of war were subjected to mock executions, the severing of body parts and electric shocks, including to intimate areas of their bodies, the court said.

Finding repeated violations of the convention, many of which had taken place over a period of more than eight years, the court said: “These actions seek to undermine the very fabric of the democracy on which the Council of Europe and its member states are founded by their destruction of individual freedoms, their suppression of political liberties and their blatant disregard for the rule of law.

“In none of the conflicts previously before the court has there been such near universal condemnation of the ‘flagrant’ disregard by the respondent state for the foundations of the international legal order established after the second world war.”