98, § 86, Reports 1998-I). The essential purpose of such 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 and carried out with reasonable promptness and expedition. It should also be effective in the sense that it is capable of leading to a determination of whether the force used in such cases was lawful and justified in the circumstances, and should 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).
128. In the present case, the kidnapping of Adlan Dovtayev and Sharpuddin Israilov was investigated. The Court must assess whether that investigation met the requirements of Article 2 of the Convention.
129. The Court notes at the outset that none of the documents from the investigation were disclosed by the Government. It therefore has to assess the effectiveness of the investigation on the basis of the few documents submitted by the applicants and the sparse information about its progress presented by the Government.
130. The Court notes that the authorities were made aware of the crime in writing on 2 January 2003 by M.D. The investigation in case No. 30002 was instituted on 4 January 2003. However, it appears that after that a number of essential steps were delayed and were eventually taken only after the communication of the complaint to the respondent Government, or not at all. For example, the Government did not inform the Court on what dates the investigators had questioned S.B. and A.S., the key witnesses who had been detained together with the two missing men. Neither did they provide any information on the substance of their statements. They only referred to those interviews in their observations on the admissibility and merits of the application (see paragraph 97 above). The Court is accordingly inclined to assume that such interviews were not carried out promptly although they should have been organised immediately after the crime was reported to the authorities and as soon as the investigation commenced in order to produce any meaningful results.
131. A number of essential steps were never taken. Most notably, it appears that the investigators took no steps to find the users of the APCs that had been seen near check-point No. 18 on 30 December 2002. Nor did the investigation try to identify and question the servicemen who had manned that check-point. Moreover, it does not appear from the information submitted by the Government that any FSB servicemen assigned to the Khankala base have ever been questioned.
132. The Court also notes that even though the first, second and eighth applicants were eventually granted victim status, they were not informed of any significant developments in the investigation. The standard replies to their queries merely stated that the proceedings were ongoing. 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 (see {Oyur} v. Turkey [GC], No. 21594/93, § 92, ECHR 1999-III).
133. Lastly, the Court notes that no information on progress in the investigation in case Nos. 30002 and 34/00/0010-03 after August 2004 has been submitted to its attention. It thus assumes that no significant investigative steps have been taken in this case for more than four years, which is a particularly lengthy period of inactivity, especially in criminal proceedings relating to such a serious crime.
134. The Court will now examine the limb of
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