hat the investigation into the kidnapping of the applicants' relatives met the Convention requirement of effectiveness, as all measures available under national law were being taken to identify those responsible.
66. The applicants argued that Usman Umalatov and Shamad Durdiyev had been detained by State servicemen and should be presumed dead in the absence of any reliable news of them for several years. The applicants also argued that the investigation had not met the effectiveness and adequacy requirements laid down by the Court's case-law. They pointed out that the district prosecutor's office had not taken certain crucial investigative steps. The investigations into Usman Umalatov and Shamad Durdiyev's kidnapping had been opened with delays and then the taking of the most basic steps was protracted. The relatives had not been properly informed of the most important investigative measures and had no access to the case files. The fact that the investigation had been pending for such a long period of time without producing any known results was further proof of its ineffectiveness. They also invited the Court to draw conclusions from the Government's unjustified failure to submit the documents from the case file to them or to the Court.
B. The Court's assessment
1. Admissibility
67. The Court considers, in the light of the parties' submissions, that the complaint raises serious issues of fact and law under the Convention, the determination of which requires an examination of the merits. The complaint under Article 2 of the Convention must therefore be declared admissible.
2. Merits
(a) The alleged violation of the right to life of Usman Umalatov and Shamad Durdiyev
68. The Court has already found that the applicants' relatives must be presumed dead following unacknowledged detention by State servicemen and that the deaths can be attributed to the State. In the absence of any justification in respect of any use of lethal force by State agents, the Court finds that there has been a violation of Article 2 in respect of Usman Umalatov and Shamad Durdiyev.
(b) The alleged inadequacy of the investigation
69. The Court has on many occasions stated that the obligation to protect the right to life under Article 2 of the Convention also requires by implication that there should be some form of effective official investigation when individuals have been killed as a result of the use of force. It has developed a number of guiding principles to be followed for an investigation to comply with the Convention's requirements (for a summary of these principles see Bazorkina, cited above, §§ 117 - 119).
70. The Court notes at the outset that most of the documents from the investigation were not disclosed by the Government. It therefore has to assess the effectiveness of the investigation on the basis of the few documents submitted by the parties and the information about its progress presented by the Government.
71. The Court discerns that the authorities were immediately made aware of the disappearance by the applicants. The investigations were instituted on 24 and 25 October 2002, that is, nine and ten days after Usman Umalatov and Shamad Durdiyev's abduction. Such a postponement per se was liable to affect the investigation of a kidnapping in life-threatening circumstances, where crucial action has to be taken in the first days after the event. It appears that within the following days the applicants and a number of key officials were questioned. The applicants were granted victim status. However, it also appears that after December 2002 the investigation failed to make any progress. In particular, the Court is struck by the investigation's failure to resolve major discrepancies concerning the witnesses' descriptions of
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