rticle 2, which safeguards the right to life and sets out the circumstances when deprivation of life may be justified, ranks as one of the most fundamental provisions in the Convention, from which no derogation is permitted. In the light of the importance of the protection afforded by Article 2, the Court must subject deprivation of life to the most careful scrutiny, taking into consideration not only the actions of State agents but also all the surrounding circumstances (see, among other authorities, McCann and Others v. the United Kingdom, 27 September 1995, § 146 - 147, Series A No. 324, and {Avsar} v. Turkey, No. 25657/94, § 391, ECHR 2001-VII).
104. The Court has already found it established that the applicants' relatives must be dead following their unacknowledged detention by State servicemen and that their deaths can be attributed to the State. In the absence of any justification put forward by the Government, the Court finds that there has been a violation of Article 2 in respect of Beslan, Rizvan, Rizavdi and Shuddi Dolsayev.
(b) Alleged inadequacy of the investigation into the abduction of the Dolsayev brothers
105. The Court has on many occasions stated that the obligation to protect the right to life under Article 2 of the Convention also requires by implication that there should be some form of effective official investigation when individuals have been killed as a result of the use of force. It has developed a number of guiding principles to be followed for an investigation to comply with the Convention's requirements (for a summary of these principles see Bazorkina, cited above, §§ 117 - 119).
106. In the present case, the kidnapping of Beslan, Rizvan, Rizavdi and Shuddi Dolsayev was investigated. The Court must assess whether that investigation met the requirements of Article 2 of the Convention.
107. The Court notes at the outset that most of the documents from the investigation were not disclosed by the Government. It therefore has to assess the effectiveness of the investigation on the basis of the few documents submitted by the parties and the information about its progress presented by the Government.
108. The Court notes that the authorities were immediately made aware of the abduction as a result of the applicants' submissions. The investigation in case No. 61144 was instituted on 30 October 2002, nine days after Beslan, Rizvan, Rizavdi and Shuddi Dolsayev had been taken away. Such a postponement per se was liable to affect the investigation of the kidnapping in life-threatening circumstances, where crucial action has to be taken in the first days after the event. It appears that although the first and second applicants were questioned within the first few days of the investigation, after that a number of essential steps were delayed and were eventually taken only several years later, or not at all. The Court notes that the district prosecutor's office conducted the crime scene examination several years after the abduction and that it failed to collect any evidence, including the tyre marks, from the scene of the abduction (see paragraphs 65, 67 and 79 above); that the prosecutors did not identify or question the servicemen of the local law-enforcement agencies and the military commander's office about their possible participation in a security operation on 21 October 2002; that the investigation failed to establish whether any APCs and other military vehicles had been used by federal authorities that night; and that the investigators failed to identify and question the officers who had manned the checkpoints in Martan-Chu on the night of the abduction and to collect the registration log of the passing vehicles. It is obvious that these investigative measures, if they were to produce any meaningful results, should have been taken immediately after the crime was reported to the authorities, and as soon as the investigati
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