ion insufficient to justify the withholding of key information requested by it (see Imakayeva v. Russia, No. 7615/02, § 123, ECHR 2006-XIII (extracts)).
175. In view of this, and bearing in mind the principles referred to above, the Court finds that it can draw inferences from the Government's conduct in respect of the well-foundedness of the applicants' allegations. The Court will thus proceed to examine crucial elements in the present case that should be taken into account when deciding whether the applicants' relatives can be presumed dead and whether their deaths can be attributed to the authorities.
176. The applicants alleged that the persons who had taken Khasan Batayev, Zaur Ibragimov, Magomed Temurkayev, Rizvan Ismailov, Sayd-Ali Musayev and Kharon Musayev away on 18 September 2000 and then killed them had been State agents.
177. The Government suggested in their submissions that the abductors of Khasan Batayev, Zaur Ibragimov, Magomed Temurkayev, Rizvan Ismailov, Sayd-Ali Musayev and Kharon Musayev might have been members of paramilitary groups. However, this allegation was not specific and the Government did not submit any material to support it. The Court takes note of the Government's allegation that the military vehicles, firearms and camouflage uniforms had probably been stolen by insurgents from Russian arsenals in the 1990s. Nevertheless, it considers it very unlikely that several military vehicles, such as APCs and UAZ vehicles, unlawfully in the possession of members of illegal armed groups could have moved freely through Russian military checkpoints in Grozny without being noticed. In the absence of any information about the investigation of such an event, the Court is unable to attribute this occurrence to unlawful paramilitaries. The Court would further stress in this connection that the evaluation of the evidence and the establishment of the facts is a matter for the Court, and it is incumbent on it to decide on the evidentiary value of the documents submitted to it (see {Celikbilek} v. Turkey, No. 27693/95, § 71, 31 May 2005).
178. The Court notes that little evidence has been submitted by the applicants, which is quite understandable in the light of the investigators' reluctance to provide the relatives of the missing men with copies of important documents from the investigation. Nevertheless, it observes that the applicants' allegation is supported by all the available evidence. It finds that the fact that a large group of armed men in uniform, equipped with military vehicles, was able to move freely through military roadblocks in broad daylight and apprehended several persons at their home strongly supports the applicants' allegation that these were State servicemen conducting a security operation. In their applications to the authorities the applicants consistently maintained that Khasan Batayev, Zaur Ibragimov, Magomed Temurkayev, Rizvan Ismailov, Sayd-Ali Musayev and Kharon Musayev had been detained by unknown servicemen and requested the investigation to look into that possibility. The domestic investigation also accepted factual assumptions as presented by the applicants and took steps to check whether law-enforcement agencies had been involved in the kidnapping. The investigation was unable to establish which precise military or security units had carried out the operation, but it does not appear that any serious steps were taken to that end.
179. The Government questioned the credibility of the applicants' statements in view of certain discrepancies relating to the exact circumstances of the arrest. The Court notes in this connection that no essential elements underlying the applicants' submissions as to the facts have been disputed by the Government. In any event, the Government did not provide to the Court the witness statements to which they referred in their submissions.
180. The Court
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