12 MORICE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT been in her possession when the investigation was transferred to Judge P.; that there was nothing to suggest that Judge M. had acted with obstructive intent or that she had been unfair in her handling of the cassette; that the handwritten card addressed to Judge M. from the public prosecutor of Djibouti did not prove that there was any connivance between them, as friendly greetings and the use of the familiar form “tu” in contacts between legal officials did not necessarily reflect a complicit intimacy, and the possibility that they shared the same opinion did not prove any complicity or connivance on the part of the French judges such as to undermine the judicial investigation procedure, regardless of the conduct of the Djibouti public prosecutor in this case; that the letter from the lawyer representing witness A. addressed to the Crown Prosecutor in Belgium, complaining that Judge M. had put pressure on his client, was not sufficiently conclusive in itself to show that Judge M. had accepted the theory of suicide or that she was hindering the establishment of the truth, even though Judge M. had acknowledged that she had told the Belgian police that A. was an unreliable witness; and, lastly, that the numerous press articles carried no evidential weight as regards the conduct and attitude of the judges in their handling of the case. 49. As regards the applicant’s defence of good faith, the Court of Appeal to which the case had been remitted noted that he had referred to the duties that were inherent in his profession and the results obtained in the case since the withdrawal of the case from Judges M. and L.L., as shown by the public prosecutor’s press statement of 19 June 2007; he had further relied on the judgment of the Douai Court of Appeal, also of 19 June 2007, upholding the decision to discontinue the proceedings started by the judges’ complaint alleging false accusation and on the conviction of the Djibouti public prosecutor by the Criminal Court of Versailles on 27 March 2008 for procuring a person to give false evidence. 50. It observed that at the time the offence in question was committed, on 7 September 2000, the applicant had secured the withdrawal of the case from Judges M. and L.L. and that Judge P. had been in possession of the video-cassette since 1 August 2000. It took the view that the applicant had engaged in highly virulent attacks on the professional and moral integrity of the two judges, in comments that seriously questioned their impartiality and intellectual honesty, clearly overstepping the right to free criticism and no longer being of any procedural relevance. The Court of Appeal further found: that the decision in the applicant’s favour to discontinue the proceedings for false accusation initiated against him as a result of the judges’ complaint was not incompatible with his bad faith; that the excessive nature of the comments made by the applicant revealed the intensity of the conflict between him and the two judges, in particular Judge M., and were tantamount to an ex post facto settling of scores, as shown by the publication of the article on 7 September 2000, after the