tion the entry concerning him did not contain a record of any injuries. He further claimed that according to A., who had been arrested together with the applicant and whose written statement he had submitted to the Court, the applicant had had no bruises before his arrest. The applicant insisted on his description of the alleged beatings and claimed that although he had initially refused to confess despite the ill-treatment, his resistance had been broken when officers had threatened him to rape his girlfriend and mother. He had only been able to retract his confession when he had been transferred from the police station to the remand centre. With reference to an encyclopaedic dictionary, he argued that it was well-known that in the first hours after beatings bruises were coloured red-blue and rose-blue (the colours mentioned in the examination record of 21 May 2002) and that in two to three days they became yellow-green. He further averred that the medical examination of 18 September 2002 had been carried out five months after the alleged ill-treatment, which cast doubt on its conclusions.
50. As regards the quality of the investigation, the applicant submitted that the investigator had questioned all the police officers on 20 September 2002 and that their investigation records were identical. The investigator had not questioned the applicant himself and had not questioned witness A. The Government had not produced a full copy of the investigation file on the applicant's complaint of ill-treatment. In particular, in addition to the documents provided by them they could have furnished copies of the complaints about the ill-treatment submitted by the applicant, his lawyers and relatives.
B. The Court's assessment
1. Admissibility
51. The Court considers it appropriate, in the circumstances of the case, to start its analysis with the assessment of the investigation carried out by the domestic authorities and then to examine the applicant's complaint under the substantive limb of Article 3.
(a) The obligation to investigate
52. The Court reiterates that Article 3 of the Convention requires authorities to investigate allegations of ill-treatment when they are "arguable" and "raise a reasonable suspicion" (see Assenov and Others v. Bulgaria, 28 October 1998, §§ 101 - 102, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998-VIII). An obligation to investigate "is not an obligation of result but of means": not every investigation should necessarily be successful or come to a conclusion which coincides with the claimant's account of events; however, it should in principle be capable of leading to the establishment of the facts of the case and, if the allegations prove to be true, to the identification and punishment of those responsible (see, among other authorities, Mikheyev v. Russia, No. 77617/01, §§ 107 and 108, 26 January 2006).
53. The Court would note at the outset that the Government produced all relevant copies from the investigation case file relating to the applicant's complaint about the alleged ill-treatment. Apart from alleging that they could have also produced copies of the complaints about the beatings lodged by the applicant, his lawyers and relatives, the applicant did not refer to any document from the inquiry file which would have been relevant for the Court's analysis but which the Government would have withheld from it, and the Court finds no evidence to that effect. Bearing in mind the above facts and the fact that the applicant himself submitted copies of his own, his lawyers' and his relatives' complaints about the ill-treatment, the Court finds that the applicant's submission in this respect is without relevance for its analysis below.
54. Turning to the particular circumstances of the case, the Court considers that the applicant's description of the alleged i
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