The exposure of violent adulterous sex should not be obstructed by the human right to privacy, the News of the World’s counsel told the court.

Max Mosley had been beaten until he bled, equivalent to the criminal act of wounding, Mark Warby, QC, told Mr Justice Eady.

The European Convention of Human Rights, which bestowed the right to privacy, had been drawn up in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War to embed European society with fundamental values to prevent a repeat of the Hitler years, he said. The Nazi-style role play described in the newspaper’s article was repugnant to that charter.

“Is there no behaviour so depraved that the law will not offer it protection from disclosure? Is everything that goes on behind closed doors automatically private?” Mr Warby said.

“Sadomasochism does not promote human dignity. It demeans it.”

Wounding was an offence even if the victim consented to it, Mr Warby said. The right to privacy, which enshrines respect to human beings and their family lives, did not extend to criminal immoralism, he argued.

James Price, QC, for Mr Mosley, argued for the freedom of consenting adults to indulge their sex fantasies. “The News of the World is out of touch with the instincts of decent British people. I say with confidence the great mass of British people, the great mass of readers of the News of the World, are tolerant and broad-minded.”

Mr Price poured scorn on the suggestion that there was a Nazi theme to the encounter.

One of the five women had worn a standard military tunic and the rest were clad in prisoner outfits hired from a joke shop. He handed Mr Justice Eady a copy of a news report of the London Marathon showing charity runners wearing identical outfits. Then he passed the judge a copy of infamous pictures of Belsen inmates wearing a distinctive and quite different uniform.

Reading from a transcript of the video, he noted that one of the women playing the role of a prison guard had said to Mr Mosley: “Welcome to Chelsea.” Mr Price said: “That would, I suppose, be the well known Chelsea death camp.”

Asked for his name, Mr Mosley had told the woman on the video: “Timothy Barnes.”

“That would be the Polish or German Jew, I suppose, in Auschwitz or Belsen,” Mr Price said. “This is an absolutely standard S&M prisoner scenario, one of the commonest found on the scene.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Ashes bid in chaos as big gamble fails
• Private schools secretly put up for sale
• Council tax debt-chasers on £600 an hour