daliyev. They further contended that the investigation of the incident was pending, that there was no evidence that the men had were State agents and that there were therefore no grounds for holding the State liable for the alleged violations of the applicants' rights. They further argued that there was no convincing evidence that the applicants' relative was dead.
79. The Government emphasised that the ROVD officer who had issued a certificate of 24 April 2003 had been dismissed from office. Neither the ROVD officer nor the head of the local administration had had the right to issue certificates concerning the ongoing investigation.
80. The first applicant's depositions to the Court had been more detailed than those made before the domestic investigation, which had precluded the investigators from establishing all the circumstances of the case. Furthermore, other witnesses' depositions had been incoherent as the numbers of armed men and military vehicles allegedly seen on the night of the crime had varied.
81. The Government asserted that the crime could have been attributable to illegal armed groups. They pointed out that groups of Ukrainian, Belorussian and ethnic Russian mercenaries had committed crimes in the territory of the Chechen Republic and emphasised that the fact that the perpetrators had Slavic features and spoke Russian did not prove that they were attached to the Russian military. They also observed that a considerable number of armaments and APCs had been stolen from Russian arsenals by insurgents in the 1990s and that members of illegal armed groups could have possessed camouflage uniforms.
B. The Court's evaluation of the facts
1. General principles
82. 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 able to corroborate or refute 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-...).
83. 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 similar unrebutted presumptions of fact. In this context, the conduct of the parties when evidence is being obtained has to be taken into account (see {Tanis} and Others, cited above, § 160).
84. The Court is sensitive to the subsidiary nature of its role and recognises that it must be cautious in taking on the role of a first-instance tribunal of fact, where this is not rendered unavoidable by the circumstances of a particular case (see, for example, McKerr v. the United Kingdom (dec.), No. 28883/95, 4 April 2000). Nonetheless, where allegations are made under Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention, the Court must apply a particularly thorough scrutiny (see, mutatis mutandis, Ribitsch v. Austria, 4 December 1995, § 32, Series A No. 336, and {Avsar}, cited above, § 283) even if certain domestic proceedings and investigations have already taken place.
85. Where the events in issue lie wholly or in large part within the exclusive knowledge of the authorities, such as in cases where persons are under their control in cust
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