Dubayev, who was born in 1981. The applicants' relatives have been detained and subsequently disappeared.
7. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
A. Abduction of Ruslan Askhabov, Isa Dubayev
and Isa Dokayev and subsequent events
1. The applicants' account
8. Isa Dokayev, the third applicant and their two minor children lived at 37 Zabolotnogo Street, in the Oktyabrskiy district of Grozny, Chechnya. At the material time the third applicant, Ms Rosa Talkhigova, was pregnant with their third child, the fifth applicant. On the night of 10 December 2002 they were all at home, along with Ruslan Askhabov and Isa Dubayev, who were Isa Dokayev's guests that night. The house was located not far from the Oktyabrskiy district department of the interior (the ROVD), the military commander's office and the local administration. Military checkpoints manned by Russian federal servicemen were located on the roads leading to and from Grozny; the area was under curfew.
9. At about 2.30 a.m. on 10 December 2002 five or six masked men in white camouflage uniforms, armed with machine guns and pistols, rushed into Isa Dokayev's house. At the entrance they shot the applicants' dog. They opened fire in one of the rooms and shot up a TV set. The men neither identified themselves nor produced any documents. They were equipped with portable radios. They spoke Russian without accent, were drunk and swore. The applicants believed that the intruders were Russian military servicemen.
10. The servicemen ordered the third applicant to stay in her room. Through the half-open door she saw her husband lying down on the kitchen floor with a soldier standing over him and pointing his machine gun at him. The soldier was kicking Isa Dokayev in the back, swearing at him and saying that he should be quiet, otherwise "it would get worse". Ruslan Askhabov and Isa Dubayev were also lying on the floor. All three men had their hands tied and black sacks placed over their heads.
11. The children woke up with the sound of shooting and started crying. From the kitchen floor Isa Dokayev asked his wife to calm them down. When the third applicant tried to leave her room one of the servicemen threatened to shoot her if she tried to open the door again. The servicemen kept swearing at her. When the third applicant asked where the servicemen were taking her husband and his guests, one of the officers replied: "We will run a computer check on them and tomorrow at 9 a.m. they will be back home".
12. The servicemen ransacked the house. After they had left the third applicant discovered that some of her family's personal documents had disappeared, including Isa Dokayev's passport, employment records and documents for his car. She also noticed that the fourth and sixth applicants' birth certificates were gone, as well as some of her jewellery.
13. In the morning of 10 December 2002 the third applicant and Isa Dokayev's brother Ramzan Dokayev discovered empty alcohol bottles in the yard and boot prints on the snow. They followed the footprints until they turned into tyre tracks leading to the Oktyabrskiy ROVD.
14. In the morning of 10 December 2002 the second and third applicant families found out about the abduction of their relatives from the first applicant family.
15. In support of their statements the applicants submitted the following documents: two witness accounts provided by the third applicant, dated 23 November 2004 and 17 June 2005; a witness account by the eighth applicant dated 16 June 2005 and a hand-drawn plan of Isa Dokayev's house and its premises dated 15 June 2005.
2. Information submitted by the Government
16. The Government did not challenge most of the facts as presented by the
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