14 TSALIKIDIS AND OTHERS v. GREECE JUDGMENT Code of Criminal Procedure, the archiving of a case file by the public prosecutor did not result in a res judicata; in the event of new facts or evidence, as in the present case, the investigation could be reopened. Referring to the Court’s judgment in Yotova v. Bulgaria (no. 43606/04, 23 October 2012), the applicants argued that the criminal investigation should be seen as a whole and the time-limit for lodging an application with the Court should therefore have been counted from the end of the supplementary criminal investigation, that is to say 16 June 2014. 44. In reply to the Government’s objection under Article 35 § 2 (b) of the Convention, the applicants submitted that the previous proceedings before the Court had only dealt with their complaint under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, alleging deficiencies in the initial criminal investigation, and not with the complaint concerning an overall lack of effectiveness of the investigation under Article 2 of the Convention. The instant case was thus clearly concerned with different subject matter and also contained new facts, since it referred to deficiencies not only in the initial but also the supplementary preliminary investigation. 45. As regards the Government’s objection alleging non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, the applicants referred to all the requests they had made in the context of both the initial and the supplementary preliminary investigation either all together or the first applicant separately. They also claimed that the domestic legislation had not provided for an effective remedy in respect of any deficiencies in the investigation. As regards an action for damages under Article 105 of the Introductory Law, the applicants argued that, on the one hand, such an action would have had very little prospect of success and, on the other hand, that it was not effective. In any event, they had already joined the criminal proceedings as civil parties and it would therefore have been pointless to submit an application for damages, since both legal remedies served the same goal and it would have been excessive to have to exhaust both penal and administrative remedies in relation to the same case. The applicants referred to several judgments of the Court to illustrate that it has on many occasions rejected the Government’s argument that an action for damages constitutes an effective remedy for complaints related to various Articles of the Convention (Yotova, cited above, § 101; Zontul v. Greece, no 12294/07, § 73, 17 January 2012). They also pointed out that the domestic decisions relied on by the Government in their attempt to prove the effectiveness of an action for damages referred to cases where the deaths at issue had been caused by the actions of State agents and were therefore not comparable with the present case. 46. Lastly, in respect of the Government’s objection alleging lack of victim status on the part of the second and third applicants, the applicants argued that classification as a victim is not dependent on the exercise of any legal remedies. Referring to a series of the Court’s judgments in which

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