Discussed here in an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Historical context on torture that doesn't leave a visible somatic mark here in Darius Rejali's Torture and Democracy.
Let me put it this way: the reason this is torture is that the aim of torture is to destroy the personality of the victim. You do that by creating an overwhelmingly hostile world in which they are helpless to defend themselves and must depend totally on the will of the torturer. And you can do that via physical pain, or psychological stress, or both. It's just different paths to the same result: the destroyed personality. So to tell whether technique X is torture, look to its effects, not to the "inherent properties" of technique X.
Actually, since technique X is typically used in conjunction with techniques Y and Z ..., you have to look to the effects of the treatment as a whole.
I posit destruction of the personality of the victim as the aim of torture because it gives the lie to the extraction of useful information excuse.
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