bsence of any evidentiary basis for this conjecture, the Court considers that the Government failed to rebut the presumption of their responsibility for the injuries inflicted on the applicant while in charge of the State. Accordingly, the responsibility for the ill-treatment lay with the domestic authorities.
38. The Court further reiterates that the ill-treatment must attain a minimum level of severity if it is to fall within the scope of Article 3. The assessment of this minimum is relative: it depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the duration of the treatment, its physical and/or mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age and state of health of the victim. In respect of a person deprived of his liberty, recourse to physical force which has not been made strictly necessary by his own conduct diminishes human dignity and is in principle an infringement of the right set forth in Article 3 (see Assenov and Others v. Bulgaria, 28 October 1998, § 94, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998-VIII).
39. The Court considers that the degree of bruising found by the doctor who examined the applicant and the subsequent decision of the remand centre administration to report those injuries to the prosecutor's office (see paragraph 17) indicate that his injuries were sufficiently serious to amount to ill-treatment within the scope of Article 3 (cf. Assenov, cited above, § 95).
40. It follows that there has been a violation of Article 3 of the Convention under its substantive limb.
2. Adequacy of the investigation
41. The Court reiterates that where an individual raises an arguable claim that he has been seriously ill-treated by the police or other such agents of the State unlawfully and in breach of Article 3, that provision, read in conjunction with the State's general duty under Article 1 of the Convention to "secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in... [the] Convention", requires by implication that there should be an effective official investigation. This investigation should be capable of leading to the identification and punishment of those responsible (see Assenov and Others v. Bulgaria, 28 October 1998, § 102, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998-VIII).
42. An obligation to investigate "is not an obligation of result, but of means": not every investigation should necessarily be successful or come to a conclusion which coincides with the claimant's account of events; however, it should in principle be capable of leading to the establishment of the facts of the case and, if the allegations prove to be true, to the identification and punishment of those responsible (see Paul and Audrey Edwards v. the United Kingdom, No. 46477/99, § 71, ECHR 2002-II, and Mahmut Kaya v. Turkey, No. 22535/93, § 124, ECHR 2000-III).
43. An investigation into serious allegations of ill-treatment must be thorough. That means that the authorities must always make a serious attempt to find out what happened and should not rely on hasty or ill-founded conclusions to close their investigation or as the basis for their decisions (see Assenov, cited above, §§ 103 et seq.). They must take all reasonable steps available to them to secure evidence concerning the incident, including, inter alia, eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence (see, mutatis mutandis, Salman v. Turkey [GC], No. 21986/93, § 106, ECHR 2000-VII; {Tanrikulu} v. Turkey [GC], No. 23763/94, ECHR 1999-IV, § 104 et seq.; and {Gul} v. Turkey, No. 22676/93, § 89, 14 December 2000). Any deficiency in the investigation which undermines its ability to establish the cause of injuries or the identity of the persons responsible will risk falling foul of this standard.
44. Furthermore, the investigation must be expedient. In cases under Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention, where the effectiveness of the official investigation is a
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