erefore 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' son was dead. They pointed out that the first applicant had not lodged her first official complaint concerning the abduction until August 2003. At some point the first applicant had informed the investigation that on 22 November 2002 armed men wearing camouflage uniforms and masks travelling in an APC, an IBV and a vehicle fitted with an anti-aircraft gun had entered her house and kidnapped Marvan Idalov. She had not mentioned that the men had been servicemen or ethnic Russians. The Government noted that the first applicant was surprisingly competent as she could easily distinguish an APC from an IBV and knew what an anti-aircraft gun looked like.
77. According to some villagers, the Idalovs' sons had been insurgents. Vakhid Idalov had been killed in a fight with the federal troops; Alikhan Idalov had gone into hiding in the forests with rebels, had then returned home and at some point had "disappeared". Hidden firearms and ammunition had been found near the Idalovs' plot of land. The fact that the first applicant had not complained to the Court about the death and disappearance of her two other sons proved, in the Government's view, that the Idalov brothers had participated in illegal armed groups.
78. The hypothesis of the involvement of State servicemen in Marvan Idalov's kidnapping had not been proved. The missing man could have been kidnapped by insurgents recruiting future rebel fighters.
79. The Government noted that groups of Ukrainian, Belarusian and ethnic Russian mercenaries had committed crimes in the territory of the Chechen Republic; thus, the fact that the perpetrators had Slavic features and spoke Russian did not prove their attachment to the Russian military. They further observed that a considerable number of weapons and armoured vehicles had been stolen by illegal armed groups from Russian arsenals in the 1990s and that anyone could purchase masks and camouflage uniforms.
B. The Court's evaluation of the facts
1. General principles
80. 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-VIII).
81. 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). 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).
82. 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 Art
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