met the requirements to be effective and adequate, as required by the Court's case-law on Article 2. She noted that the investigation had been opened belatedly. In particular, the investigation into the discovery of the four unidentified bodies near the village of Goy-Chu had not been opened until after the communication of the present application to the Government. Furthermore, no effective measures were taken to establish what had happened to Yusup Satabayev and the three other detainees. The officers of the Urus-Martan VOVD who had held them in custody had not been questioned. Furthermore, the investigation had been repeatedly suspended and resumed, which had only added to the delay. Finally, the applicant had not been properly informed of the most important investigative steps.
118. The Government submitted that a considerable number of investigative actions had been conducted and persons having victim status in the proceedings had been duly informed of them.
2. The Court's assessment
119. The Court reiterates that the obligation to protect the right to life under Article 2 of the Convention, read in conjunction with the State's general duty under Article 1 of the Convention to "secure to everyone within [its] jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in [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 (see, mutatis mutandis, McCann and Others, cited above, p. 49, § 161, and Kaya v. Turkey, 19 February 1998, § 86, Reports 1998-I). The essential purpose of such investigation is to secure the effective implementation of the domestic laws which protect the right to life and, in those cases involving State agents or bodies, to ensure their accountability for deaths occurring under their responsibility. This investigation should be independent, accessible to the victim's family, carried out with reasonable promptness and expedition, effective in the sense that it is capable of leading to a determination of whether the force used in such cases was or was not justified in the circumstances or otherwise unlawful, and afford a sufficient element of public scrutiny of the investigation or its results (see Hugh Jordan v. the United Kingdom, No. 24746/94, §§ 105 - 109, 4 May 2001, and Douglas-Williams v. the United Kingdom (dec.), No. 56413/00, 8 January 2002).
120. The Court notes at the outset that all 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.
121. Turning to the facts of the case, the Court notes that, according to the applicant, she applied to the authorities asking for assistance in establishing the whereabouts of Yusup Satabayev within a few days of 14 August 2000. On 19 August 2000 she received a prosecutor's reply to her queries. This information is not contested by the Government. However, an official investigation was not opened until 18 October 2000, that is, approximately two months later. This delay, for which no explanation has been provided, was in itself liable to affect the investigation into a disappearance in life-threatening circumstances, where crucial action must be taken in the first days after the events complained of.
122. The Court observes that on 1 November 2000 the applicant was granted victim status. However, it appears that a number of crucial steps were subsequently delayed and were eventually taken only after the communication of the complaint to the respondent Government, or not at all.
123. In particular, according to the information available to the Court, between October 2000 and September 2006 the investigating authorities quest
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