had seen the military vehicles. They pointed out the discrepancies in their statements made to the Court and the ones made to the domestic investigating authorities.
B. Article 38 § 1 (a) and consequent
inferences drawn by the Court
89. The Court has on many occasions reiterated that the Contracting States are required to furnish all necessary facilities to the Court and that a failure on a Government's part to submit information which is in their hands, without a satisfactory explanation, may reflect negatively on the level of compliance by a respondent State with its obligations under Article 38 § 1 (a) of the Convention (see {Timurtas} v. Turkey, No. 23531/94, § 66, ECHR 2000-VI).
90. In the present case the applicants alleged that their relatives had been illegally arrested by the authorities and had then disappeared. They also alleged that no proper investigation had taken place. In view of these allegations, the Court asked the Government to produce documents from the criminal investigation file opened in relation to the kidnapping. The evidence contained in that file was regarded by the Court as crucial to the establishment of the facts in the present case.
91. The Government confirmed the principal facts as presented by the applicants. They refused to disclose any of the documents of substance from the criminal investigation file, relying on Article 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Government also argued that the Court's procedure contained no guarantees as to the confidentiality of documents, in the absence of sanctions against applicants in the event of a breach of the obligation not to disclose the contents of such documents to the public. They cited, by way of comparison, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 17 July 1998 (Articles 70 and 72) and the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (Articles 15 and 22) and argued that these instruments provided for personal responsibility for a breach of the rules of confidentiality and laid down a detailed procedure for the pre-trial examination of evidence.
92. The Court notes that Rule 33 § 2 of the Rules of Court permits a restriction on the principle of the public character of documents deposited with the Court for legitimate purposes, such as the protection of national security, the private life of the parties or the interests of justice. The Court cannot speculate as to whether the information contained in the criminal investigation file in the present case was indeed of such nature, since the Government did not request the application of this Rule and it is the obligation of the party requesting confidentiality to substantiate its request.
93. Furthermore, the two international courts whose statutes were cited by the Government operate in the context of international criminal prosecution of individuals and have jurisdiction over offences contrary to their own administration of justice. The Court observes that it has previously stated that criminal-law liability is distinct from international-law responsibility under the Convention. The Court's competence is confined to the latter and is based on its own provisions, which are to be interpreted and applied on the basis of the objectives of the Convention and in the light of the relevant principles of international law (see, mutatis mutandis, {Avsar} v. Turkey, No. 25657/94, § 284, ECHR 2001-VII).
94. The Court lastly notes that it has already found on a number of occasions that the provisions of Article 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure do not preclude the disclosure of documents from a pending investigation file, but rather set out a procedure for and limits to such disclosure (see Mikheyev v. Russia, No. 77617/01, § 104, 26 January 2006, and Imakayeva v. Russia, No. 7615/02, § 123, ECHR 2006-XIII). For these reasons the Court considers
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