14 O’HALLORAN AND FRANCIS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT relevant steps of the investigation had been declared void. He declined to take the oath as a witness under the Code of Criminal Procedure on the ground that evidence he might be called to give before the investigating judge would have been self-incriminating. The Court accepted that it would have been admissible for the applicant to refuse to answer questions from the judge that were likely to steer him in the direction of self-incriminating evidence, but found on the facts that the fine in the case was imposed in order to ensure that statements were truthful, rather than to force the witness to give evidence. Accordingly, the fines were imposed before a risk of selfincrimination ever arose (see Serves, cited above, §§ 43-47). 49. In Heaney and McGuinness, the applicants, who had been arrested in connection with a bombing, declined to answer questions under special legislation requiring an individual to provide a full account of his movements and actions during a specified period. They were acquitted of the substantive offence, and imprisoned for failing to give an account of their movements. After reviewing the case-law and finding Article 6 §§ 1 and 2 to be applicable, the Court accepted that the right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself were not absolute rights. It then found, after considering the various procedural protections available, that the “degree of compulsion” imposed on the applicants, namely, a conviction and imprisonment for failing to give “a full account of [their] movements and actions during any specified period and all information in [their] possession in relation to the commission or intended commission [of specified offences]”, “in effect destroyed the very essence of their privilege against self-incrimination and their right to remain silent”. Thereafter, the Court considered that the security and public-order concerns relied on by the Government could not justify the provision (see Heaney and McGuinness, cited above, §§ 47-58, with reference back to § 24). 50. The applicant in Weh v. Austria (no. 38544/97, 8 April 2004) was fined for giving inaccurate information in reply to a request from the District Authority under the Motor Vehicles Act to disclose the name and address of the driver of his car on a particular date. Proceedings had already been opened against unknown offenders. The Court declined to rely on the earlier cases of P., R. and H. (v. Austria, nos. 15135/89, 15136/89 and 15137/89, Commission decision of 5 September 1989, Decisions and Reports 62, p. 319), and it noted that the applicant had been required to do no more than state a simple fact – who had been the driver of his car – which was not in itself incriminating. The Court found that in the case before it, there was no link between the criminal proceedings which had been initiated against persons unknown and the proceedings in which the applicant was fined for giving inaccurate information (see Weh, cited above, §§ 32-56). 51. In Shannon (cited above) the applicant was required to give information to an investigator into theft and false accounting under the