ok it further ten days to institute the investigation. The Court considers that those delays, for which no explanation was provided, were in itself liable to affect the investigation of a crime such as abduction in life-threatening circumstances, where crucial action must be taken promptly.
115. From the Government's submissions it follows that the investigators had carried out various investigative measures. However, beyond simply referring to those measures, the Government mostly did not even specify the dates when they had allegedly been taken, let alone provide any supporting documents. In the absence of that information the Court cannot assess whether the investigative steps in question were taken expeditiously.
116. In any event, having regard to the investigative measures referred to by the Government, the Court emphasises that certain crucial investigative steps were not taken at all. Most notably, the Court has no information to indicate that any efforts were made to identify and question the servicemen from the roof unit on duty on 4 December 2000, other than Mr P. and Mr U. As the Court has emphasised above, this omission is particularly striking in view of the evident contradictions between Mr P.'s and Mr U.'s statements and the fact that their fellow servicemen names could have been easily obtained from the relevant duty logs (see paragraph 62 above). In those circumstances it appears even more striking to the Court that the investigators made no attempt to question Mr Dug., another servicemen from the roof unit, whose name Mr P. explicitly mentioned while being questioned by investigators (see paragraph 65 above). It likewise does not transpire from the Government's submissions that the investigators made any attempts to question the residents of house No. 269, except for Ms V. There is no indication that Mr S., the former head of the ROVD who might have had information of relevance to the investigation, was questioned. In the Court's opinion, the above-mentioned omissions seriously undermined the ability of the investigation to establish the circumstances of the abduction of the applicant's relative and to identify those responsible for it.
117. The Court further observes that while the third applicant was promptly granted victim status, it took the town prosecutor's office over seven months to declare the first applicant a victim in connection with the investigation into the abduction of her son. Moreover, there is no indication that the town or district prosecutor's office ever considered the issue of granting victim status to the second applicant. In any event, it transpires from the documents submitted by the applicants that they were either not informed about important developments in the investigation, such as the decisions to suspend it or to transfer the case file from the town to the district prosecutor's office, or were notified of those developments with a considerable delay (see paragraphs 36 - 38 and 43 above). Accordingly, the investigators failed to ensure that the investigation was subjected to the required level of public scrutiny, and to safeguard the interests of the next of kin in the proceedings (see {Ogur} v. Turkey [GC], No. 21594/93, § 92, ECHR 1999-III).
118. It is further noted that the investigation has been pending for over seven years and was suspended and resumed several times, resulting in lengthy periods of inactivity on the part of the investigators.
119. Having regard to the limb of the Government's objection that was joined to the merits of the application, inasmuch as it concerns the fact that the domestic investigation is still pending, the Court notes that the investigation, having been repeatedly suspended and resumed and plagued by inexplicable delays and omissions, has been ongoing for over seven years and has produced no tangible results. Accordingly, the Court finds that
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