organised it or on what legal grounds but submitted that detailed information on that check was being collected by the investigation.
58. The Government further argued that the involvement of Russian servicemen in Aslanbek Khamidov's kidnapping had not been proven and that there were therefore no grounds for holding the State liable for the alleged violations of the applicants' rights. They further argued that there was no convincing evidence that Aslanbek Khamidov was dead.
59. The Government emphasised that Mr T. and Mr M., the witnesses who had been arrested in Alleroy on 25 October 2000, had not claimed to have seen Aslanbek Khamidov at the Tsentoroy filtration point. None of the witnesses had mentioned any insignia on the armed men's camouflage uniforms, which proved that those men could not be members of the military.
60. Moreover, the Government claimed that the investigation file in case No. 39024 contained no transcript of Mr T.'s interview of 6 September 2002 referred to by the applicants and concluded that the applicants had submitted false information to the Court. The first applicant had stated that her husband's kidnappers had been drunk only in the course of her additional interview, which proved that she was trying to "discredit the Russian military forces" before the Court.
61. The applicants' references to the letters by the prosecutor's offices and the head of the village administration are inappropriate as those letters merely cited the applicants' allegations without reaching any conclusions as to military involvement in the crime.
62. The Government further pointed out that various groups of Ukrainian mercenaries had committed crimes in the territory of the Chechen Republic and emphasised that the fact that the perpetrators had Slavic features and spoke Russian did not prove their attachment to the Russian military. They also observed that a considerable number of armaments and APCs had been stolen by illegal armed groups from Russian arsenals in the 1990s and that anyone could purchase camouflage uniforms.
63. In sum, the Government insisted that the involvement of State agents in Aslanbek Khamidov's kidnapping had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt.
B. The Court's evaluation of the facts
1. General principles
64. In cases in which there are conflicting accounts of events, the Court is inevitably confronted when establishing the facts with the same difficulties as those faced by any first-instance court. When, as in the instant case, the respondent Government have exclusive access to information capable of corroborating or refuting the applicants' allegations, any lack of cooperation by the Government without a satisfactory explanation may give rise to the drawing of inferences as to the well-foundedness of the applicant's allegations (see {Tanis} and Others v. Turkey, No. 65899/01, § 160, ECHR 2005-VIII).
65. The Court points out that a number of principles have been developed in its case-law when it is faced with the task of establishing facts on which the parties disagree. As to the facts that are in dispute, the Court reiterates its jurisprudence confirming the standard of proof "beyond reasonable doubt" in its assessment of evidence (see {Avsar} v. Turkey, No. 25657/94, § 282, ECHR 2001-VII (extracts)). Such proof may follow from the coexistence of sufficiently strong, clear and concordant inferences or of similar unrebutted presumptions of fact. In this context, the conduct of the parties when evidence is being obtained has to be taken into account (see {Tanis} and Others, cited above, § 160).
66. The Court is sensitive to the subsidiary nature of its role and recognises that it must be cautious in taking on the role of a first-instance tribunal of fact, where this is not rendered unavoidable b
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