ers that the State Secrets Act of 21 July 1993 listing categories of information that may be classified as secret, and which was supplemented by Presidential Decree No. 1203 of 30 November 1995, listing information classified as secret with sufficient precision - both documents being publicly available so as to enable the applicant to foresee the consequences of his actions - constituted a sufficient legal basis for the interference with the applicant's rights under Article 10 of the Convention with regard to the period between 11 September and 8 October 1997.
(ii) 9 October - 20 November 1997
79. As regards the second period, the Court notes that it is not in dispute between the parties that the State Secrets Act in its amended version constituted a legal basis for the applicant's conviction.
(iii) Overall
80. In view of the above the Court finds that there existed sufficient legal basis for the applicant's conviction throughout the whole period between 11 September and 20 November 1997. Furthermore, the Court gives weight to the undisputed existence of such basis as of 20 November 1997 which, given the continuous nature of the offence, was sufficient under the domestic law to bring the applicant's conduct within the provision of the Criminal Code applicable in his case.
(b) Quality of law
81. The applicant also complained that the domestic courts' finding that information collected by him had contained State secrets had been based on Decree No. 055 of the Ministry of Defence, a secret and therefore inaccessible document relied on by the experts in their report of 14 September 2001, which had led to an extensive interpretation and overly broad application of the State Secrets Act and Presidential Decree No. 1203. He insisted that in such circumstances he could not have foreseen that the information he had collected had been classified and that his actions had been criminally liable. The Government conceded that the ministerial decree referred to by the applicant had been applied in his case, but argued that it had only been used to assess the degree of importance and secrecy of the information collected by the applicant rather than for deciding whether that information constituted a State secret.
82. The applicant disputed, in essence, that the domestic law applied in his case had met the criteria of foreseeability and accessibility, or, in other words, that his conviction had been "lawful" within the meaning of Article 10 of the Convention. In this connection, the Court notes firstly that, as it has already held above, the State Secrets Act, taken together with Presidential Decree No. 1203, were in themselves sufficiently precise to enable the applicant to foresee the consequences of his actions. In so far as the applicant complained of the extensive and therefore unforeseeable interpretation of the said legal instruments by the domestic courts, which had allegedly relied on an unpublished ministerial decree, it is clear from the facts of the present case that the applicant, by virtue of his office, had access to Decree No. 055, read it and signed a document to that effect in autumn 1996 (see paragraph 19 above), that is, prior to the commission of the offences imputed to him. Against this background, the Court rejects the applicant's argument concerning the alleged lack of accessibility and foreseeability of the domestic law applied in his case.
83. Overall, the Court is satisfied that in the circumstances of the present case the domestic law met the qualitative requirements of accessibility and foreseeability, and that therefore the alleged interference with the applicant's rights under Article 10 of the Convention was lawful, within the meaning of the Convention.
2. Whether the interference pursued a legitimate aim
84. The Court further has no difficulties in acceptin
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