d illusory in their case.
B. The Court's assessment
63. As regards criminal law remedies raised by the Government in the present case, the Court observes that the applicants complained to the law enforcement agencies immediately after the abduction of Ruslan Askhabov, Isa Dubayev and Isa Dokayev and that an investigation has been pending since 16 December 2002. The applicants and the Government dispute the effectiveness of this investigation.
64. 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 under Article 2. Thus, it decides to join this objection to the merits and considers that these matters fall to be examined below under the relevant substantive provisions of the Convention.
II. The Court's assessment
of the evidence and the establishment of the facts
A. The parties' arguments
65. The applicants maintained that it was beyond reasonable doubt that the men who had taken away Ruslan Askhabov, Isa Dubayev and Isa Dokayev were State agents. In support of their complaint they referred to the following matters. At the material time Grozny was totally under the control of the Russian federal forces; checkpoints manned by military servicemen were located on the roads leading to and from the settlement. The area was under curfew. The armed men who had abducted Ruslan Askhabov, Isa Dubayev and Isa Dokayev spoke Russian without accent, used obscene language and were drunk. They were wearing specific camouflage uniform, were armed and had portable radios. The men fired a number of shots without fear of being heard by law enforcement agencies located in close proximity to the house. They were able to move freely around in Grozny during the curfew and they left tracks which led to the ROVD.
66. The Government submitted that unidentified armed men had kidnapped Ruslan Askhabov, Isa Dubayev and Isa Dokayev. They further contended that the investigation of the incident was pending, that there was no evidence that the men were State agents and that there were therefore no grounds for holding the State liable for the alleged violations of the applicants' rights. In support of their position they referred to the following facts. The investigation established that none of the three missing men had been involved in the activities of illegal armed groups. Moreover, two of them were police officers. No special operations had been conducted in the Oktyabrskiy district of Grozny on the night of 10 December 2002. There was no convincing evidence that the applicants' relatives were dead. The fact that the perpetrators of the abduction spoke unaccented Russian and were wearing camouflage uniforms did not mean that these men could not have been members of illegal armed groups or criminals pursuing a blood feud. The Government further alleged that the applicants' description of the circumstances surrounding the abduction was inconsistent. In particular, the applicants' allegations that the abductors were drunk was based on just one witness statement; their allegations that the abductors had opened fire were unsubstantiated and the applicants were inconsistent in their descriptions of the number of the shots fired by the perpetrators. The Government referred to the witness statements made to the domestic investigation; but they did not submit them to the Court.
B. The Court's evaluation of the facts
67. The Court observes that in its extensive jurisprudence it has developed a number of general principles relating to the establishment of facts in dispute, in particular when faced with allegations of disappearance under Article 2 of the Convention (for a summary of these, see Bazorkina v. Russia, N
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