MEDVEDYEV AND OTHERS v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 17 THE LAW I. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 5 § 1 OF THE CONVENTION 38. The applicants claimed that they had been arbitrarily deprived of their liberty after the ship was boarded by the French authorities. They relied on Article 5 § 1 of the Convention, the relevant parts of which provide: “1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law: ... (c) the lawful arrest or detention of a person effected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence or when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so; ...” A. The Chamber judgment 39. The Chamber disagreed with the French courts’ approach in so far as they referred to international conventions to which Cambodia was not party and relied on legal provisions which, at the material time, provided for extraterritorial intervention by the French authorities only on French ships, “ships flying the flag of a State Party to the Vienna Convention of 20 December 1988 [which Cambodia has not ratified, as mentioned previously] ... or lawfully registered in such a State, at the request or with the agreement of the flag State”, and on ships flying no flag or having no nationality. In addition to the fact that the Winner did not fit into any of those categories, it noted that the Law of 15 July 1994 had been amended, inter alia, so that it no longer referred only to States Parties to the Vienna Convention. It also considered that the Government’s argument concerning the applicability of and compliance with the legal provisions concerned was based on a contradiction, as they had submitted that at the time of the interception the Winner had been flying no flag, while at the same time asserting that the French authorities had previously sought confirmation from the Cambodian authorities that the ship was registered in their country