ot render the presence of the applicant's lawyer indispensable. The Court also noted that the national authorities had made efforts to take evidence from the witness in person; having been unable to do so, they had based their decision solely on the witness's pre-trial statements; those statements had been made by him to an investigating judge, whose impartiality had not been contested; the courts had regard to other testimony and to the observations submitted by the applicant during the investigation and at the trial. Since it had been open to the applicant to put questions and to make comments himself, the Court concluded that the applicant enjoyed the guarantees secured under Article 6 § 3 (d) to a sufficient extent.
68. In Doorson v. the Netherlands (26 March 1996, §§ 24 - 25 and §§ 66 et seq., Reports 1996-II), which concerned anonymous witnesses, the Court found no violation of Article 6 when two of six such witnesses against the applicant had been questioned by an investigating judge on the direction of the appeal court and the defence lawyer had had an opportunity to examine the witnesses, albeit in the absence of the applicant.
69. The Court considered in a recent case against Russia that the confrontations carried out by an investigator between several witnesses and the applicant in the presence of his lawyer satisfied the requirements of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) in so far as questions had been put to those witnesses and their answers had been recorded (see the partial admissibility decision in Slyusarev v. Russia (dec.), No. 60333/00, 9 November 2006). The Court noted that the applicant had not explained in what other respect the confrontations had been procedurally deficient and why further questioning of the above witnesses before the trial court had been necessary. The Court was not provided with any evidence that the defence had somehow been placed in a disadvantageous position {vis-a-vis} the prosecution during the face-to-face confrontations. Lastly, noting that the applicant's conviction on the relevant charges had not been based solely on the testimonies of the above witnesses, the Court held that although the latter had been absent at the trial, the applicant's right under Article 6 § 3 (d) had been properly secured at the pre-trial investigation stage (see also, for similar reasoning, Vozhigov v. Russia, No. 5953/02, §§ 52 - 58, 26 April 2007).
(b) Application of those principles in the present case
70. Turning to the circumstances of the present case, the Court considers that, although S. did not testify at a court hearing he should, for the purposes of Article 6 § 3 (d) of the Convention, be regarded as a witness because his statement, as taken down by the investigative authorities, was used in evidence by the domestic courts. It is noted that he was not an anonymous witness and that his absence at the trial was due to his having absconded.
71. First of all, as regards the alleged unlawfulness of the reading-out of S.'s pre-trial statement, the Court reiterates that the admissibility of evidence is primarily a matter for regulation by national law and as a general rule it is for the national courts to assess the evidence before them. The Court's task under the Convention is not to give a ruling as to whether statements of witnesses were properly admitted as evidence, but rather to ascertain whether the proceedings as a whole, including the way in which evidence was taken, were fair (see, among other authorities, Van Mechelen, cited above, § 50, and Doorson, cited above, § 67; see also Babkin v. Russia (dec.), No. 14899/04, 8 January 2009). The Court thus considers that it was up to the national courts to determine what provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure applied to the co-defendant's statement (see paragraph 40 above).
72. The Court further notes that the main thrust of the applicant's complaint wa
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