t's husband referring to forwarding the information about Khasan Yusupov's disappearance to a number of law enforcement authorities including the district prosecutor's office (see paragraphs 19 and 44 above). It thus transpires that at latest by December 2002 the law enforcement authorities and the district military commander's office were aware of the incident. The military prosecutor's office opened an investigation into possible desertion in December (or even November) 2002. However, judging from the documents reviewed by the Court, no significant steps were taken within that round of investigation. It does not appear that the applicants or any other relatives of the missing men had been questioned. It also does not appear that the military prosecutors had taken any steps to verify whether the three men had indeed left the guarded area of the military compound or to establish what had happened to them after they had allegedly done so.
67. The investigation into the alleged murder was instituted by the district prosecutor's office on 3 December 2003, which is over one year after the disappearance. Such a postponement per se was liable to affect the investigation of the disappearance in life-threatening circumstances, where crucial action has to be taken in the first days after the event. Within days following the submissions of the relatives' complaints to the law enforcement authorities in November 2003, the first applicant and other relative of the missing men were questioned and granted victim status. As to the timing of their submissions, it does not appear that the relatives had been called to give witness statements prior to November and December 2003, even though the authorities must have been aware of the disappearance of the four men at the latest in December 2002. Since they were not questioned or summoned to give information prior to these dates, the Court rejects the Government's argument that they were responsible for the delay in conveying important information and for the ensuing difficulties encountered by the district prosecutor's office. The Court is also struck by the fact that the relatives were asked for descriptions and photographs of the missing men only in March 2005 (see paragraph 45).
68. Furthermore, a number of essential steps were never taken. Most notably, it does not appear that the investigation tried to identify and question the servicemen who had manned checkpoint No. 1, in front of which Khasan Yusupov had last been seen, to question investigator L. of the military prosecutor's office about the events of that day or to collect information from the district military commander's office about the situation of their three missing servicemen. Inexplicably, the investigation opened by the district prosecutor's office in December 2003 has never been joined with the investigation into the same event carried out by the military prosecutor's office since December 2002; nor is it apparent that it has even benefitted from any data collected or conclusions reached in the course of this second set of proceedings.
69. The Court finally notes that even though the first applicant was granted victim status in the investigation concerning the murder of her son, she and other relatives were only informed of the suspension and resumption of the proceedings, and not of any other significant developments. Accordingly, the investigators failed to ensure that the investigation received the required level of public scrutiny, or to safeguard the interests of the next of kin in the proceedings.
70. The Government, referring to Article 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, argued that the applicants could have sought judicial review of the decisions of the investigating authorities in the context of the exhaustion of domestic remedies. The Court observes that the applicants, having no access to the case file and no
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