ossibility of requesting confidentiality under Rule 33 of the Rules of Court, but noted that the Court provided no guarantees that once in receipt of the investigation file, the applicants or their representatives, some of them not being Russian nationals and residing outside Russia's territory, would not disclose these materials to the public. According to the Government, in the absence of any sanctions against the applicants for the disclosure of confidential information and materials, there were no guarantees concerning their compliance with the Convention and the Rules of Court.
143. The Court reiterates that it is of the utmost importance for the effective operation of the system of individual petition instituted under Article 34 of the Convention that States should furnish all necessary facilities to make possible a proper and effective examination of applications (see {Tanrikulu} v. Turkey [GC], No. 23763/94, § 70, ECHR 1999-IV). This obligation requires the Contracting States to furnish all necessary facilities to the Court, whether it is conducting a fact-finding investigation or performing its general duties as regards the examination of applications. Failure on a Government's part to submit such information which is in their hands, without a satisfactory explanation, may not only give rise to the drawing of inferences as to the well-foundedness of the applicant's allegations, but may also reflect negatively on the level of compliance by a respondent State with its obligations under Article 38 of the Convention (see {Timurtas} v. Turkey, No. 3531/94, § 66, ECHR 2000-VI). In a case where the application raises issues of the effectiveness of an investigation, the documents of the criminal investigation are fundamental to the establishment of the facts and their absence may prejudice the Court's proper examination of the complaint both at the admissibility stage and at the merits stage (see {Tanrikulu}, cited above, § 70).
144. The Court observes that it has on several occasions asked the Government to submit a copy of the file on the investigation opened in connection with the disappearance of the applicants' relatives. The evidence contained in that file was regarded by the Court as crucial to the establishment of the facts in the present case. In reply, the Government submitted several documents, mostly copies of procedural decisions instituting, suspending or reopening criminal proceedings, copies of an investigator's decision to resume the criminal case, investigators' requests to various law-enforcement bodies and letters informing the applicants of the suspension and reopening of the criminal proceedings in the case. However, the Government refused to produce the entire file, referring to Article 161 of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure.
145. The Court further notes that the Government did not request the application of Rule 33 § 2 of the Rules of Court, which permits a restriction on the principle of the public character of the documents deposited with the Court for legitimate purposes, such as the protection of national security, the private life of the parties, and the interests of justice. The Court further notes that the provisions of Article 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, to which the Government referred, do not preclude disclosure of the documents from the file of an ongoing investigation, but rather set out the procedure for and restrictions on such disclosure. The Government failed to specify the nature of the documents and the grounds on which they could not be disclosed (see, for similar conclusions, Mikheyev v. Russia, No. 77617/01, § 104, 26 January 2006). The Court also notes that in a number of comparable cases that have been reviewed by the Court, the Government submitted documents from the investigation files without reference to Article 161 (see, for example, Khashiyev and Akayeva v. Russia, Nos. 57942/00 and 57945/00,
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