kidnapping.
95. The Court considers that the Government's objection raises issues concerning the effectiveness of the investigation which are closely linked to the merits of the applicants' complaints. Thus, it decides to joint this objection to the merits of the case and considers that the issue falls to be examined below.
III. The Court's assessment
of the evidence and the establishment of the facts
A. The parties' arguments
96. The applicants maintained that it was beyond reasonable doubt that the men who had taken away Adlan Dovtayev and Sharpuddin Israilov were State agents. In support of their complaint they referred to the following facts. The armed men had travelled in the APC, while at the material time only members of federal forces could have used this type of vehicle in the Chechen Republic. The abduction had taken place in the vicinity of federal check-point No. 18. The detained men had been held inside the Khankala military base.
97. The Government rejected the applicants' allegations. They argued that it had not been proved that any State servicemen had been involved in the kidnapping of Adlan Dovtayev and Sharpuddin Israilov. The fact that the detained persons had been held at the Khankala base had not been proved because M.A. had been the only witness who had recognised the place of the detention, while S.B. and A.S. had not been sure that they could have identified the base. None of the detainees questioned by the investigation had been able to identify the perpetrators.
98. Considering that M.A., R.Ya. and A.S. had been acting police officers and Sharpuddin Israilov had applied for a police officer's post, the Government suggested that the kidnappers could have been members of illegal armed groups wishing to take revenge on these men for their loyalty towards the federal forces. The insurgents had asked questions relating to the terrorist attack on the House of the Government in order to mislead the detainees and to create a negative image of the governing bodies of the Chechen Republic.
99. The letter of the city prosecutor's office of 2 June 2003 did not prove that any servicemen had been implicated in the crime but only showed that such a hypothesis had been considered by the investigation. The copies of M.A.'s statements to the police officer and the report on the case submitted by the applicants had not been signed by an investigator of the prosecutor's office and thus should be regarded as inadmissible evidence. The investigation file in case No. 34/00/0010-03 did not contain such documents.
B. The Court's evaluation of the facts
1. General principles
100. 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).
101. 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 simil
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