ents were the perpetrators of such a crime. The Court has already found above that, in the absence of relevant information, it is unable to find that security forces were implicated in the disappearance of the applicants' relative (see paragraph 105 above). Neither has it established "beyond reasonable doubt" that Khava Magomadova was deprived of her life by State agents.
108. In such circumstances the Court finds no State responsibility, and thus no violation of the substantive limb of Article 2 of the Convention.
(b) The alleged inadequacy of the investigation into the abduction
109. 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, § 161, and Kaya v. Turkey, 19 February 1998, § 86, Reports 1998-I). The essential purpose of such an 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 - 09, ECHR 2001-III (extracts), and Douglas-Williams v. the United Kingdom (dec.), No. 56413/00, 8 January 2002).
110. The Court notes that there is no proof that Khava Magomadova has been killed. However, it reiterates that the above-mentioned obligations also apply to cases where a person has disappeared in circumstances which may be regarded as life-threatening (see {Togcu}, cited above, § 112). The applicants informed the investigating authorities that Khava Magomadova had been kidnapped in unclear circumstances. Given a considerable number of reported enforced disappearances of persons in the Chechen Republic and enduring confrontation between illegal armed groups and federal troops in the region in the early 2000s, the Court considers that the disappearance of Khava Magomadova could be regarded as life-threatening. Furthermore, after a certain lapse of time during which no information on the fate of the missing person had been received, both the applicants and investigators could have presumed that she had been deprived of her life at the hands of the kidnappers. Accordingly, the Court concludes that the State authorities were under a positive obligation to investigate the crime in question.
111. Given that there was an investigation into the kidnapping of Khava Magomadova, the Court must now assess whether it met the requirements of Article 2 of the Convention.
112. The applicants argued that the domestic authorities had failed to commence the investigation promptly and that they had not taken all requisite investigative measures.
113. The Government, in their turn, insisted that the investigation had been flawless.
114. The Court notes at the outset that most of 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 sparse information about its progress presented by the Government.
115. The Cour
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