B. The Court's assessment
1. Admissibility
87. The Court considers, in the light of the parties' submissions, that the complaint raises serious issues of fact and law under the Convention, the determination of which requires an examination of the merits. Further, the Court has already found that the Government's objection concerning the alleged non-exhaustion of domestic remedies should be joined to the merits of the complaint (see paragraph 68 above). The complaint under Article 2 of the Convention must therefore be declared admissible.
2. Merits
(a) The alleged violation of the right to life of Bekkhan Alaudinov
88. The Court reiterates that Article 2, which safeguards the right to life and sets out the circumstances when deprivation of life may be justified, ranks as one of the most fundamental provisions in the Convention, from which no derogation is permitted. In the light of the importance of the protection afforded by Article 2, the Court must subject deprivation of life to the most careful scrutiny, taking into consideration not only the actions of State agents but also all the surrounding circumstances (see, among other authorities, McCann and Others v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 27 September 1995, Series A No. 324, §§ 146 - 147, and {Avsar} v. Turkey, No. 25657/94, § 391, ECHR 2001-VII (extracts)).
89. The Court has already found that the applicant's son must be presumed dead following unacknowledged detention by State servicemen and that his death can be attributed to the State. In the absence of any explanation put forward by the Government, the Court finds that there has been a violation of Article 2 in respect of Bekkhan Alaudinov.
(b) The alleged inadequacy of the investigation of the kidnapping
90. The Court has on many occasions stated that the obligation to protect the right to life under Article 2 of 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. It has developed a number of guiding principles to be followed for an investigation to comply with the Convention's requirements (for a summary of these principles see Bazorkina, cited above, §§ 117 - 119).
91. In the present case, the kidnapping of Bekkhan Alaudinov was investigated. The Court must assess whether that investigation met the requirements of Article 2 of the Convention.
92. The Court notes at the outset that the documents from the investigation file 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 applicant and the information about its progress presented by the Government.
93. The Court notes that the authorities were made aware of the crime by the applicant. The investigation in case No. 25157 was instituted on 12 December 2001, that is, one month and four days after Bekkhan Alaudinov's abduction. Such a postponement per se was liable to affect the investigation of a kidnapping in life-threatening circumstances, where crucial action has to be taken in the first days after the event. 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 (see paragraph 55). Furthermore, the Court notes that, as can be seen from the decision of the domestic court, the investigators failed to identify and question the chief officers of the Urus-Martan district military commander's office; failed to establish the owner of the military vehicles which had moved around Urus-Martan on the night of the abduction; and failed to identify and question the officer whom the applicant had identified as one of her son's abduct
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