38 MEDVEDYEV AND OTHERS v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 126. The Court has noted on several occasions that the investigation of terrorist offences undoubtedly presents the authorities with special problems (see Brogan and Others, cited above, § 61; Murray v. the United Kingdom, 28 October 1994, § 58, Series A no. 300-A; and Aksoy v. Turkey, 18 December 1996, § 78, Reports 1996-VI). This does not mean, however, that the investigating authorities have carte blanche under Article 5 to arrest suspects for questioning, free from effective control by the domestic courts and, ultimately, by the Convention supervisory institutions, whenever they choose to assert that terrorism is involved (see Öcalan, cited above, § 104). The same approach applies to the fight against drug trafficking on the high seas, the importance of which the Court has acknowledged in paragraph 81 above and which also undoubtedly presents special problems. 2. Application of the above principles 127. The Court notes that the arrest and detention of the applicants began with the interception of the ship on the high seas on 13 June 2002. The applicants were not placed in police custody until 26 June 2002, after arriving in Brest. Before the Grand Chamber, and for the first time since the proceedings began – which the Court can only find regrettable – the Government submitted substantiated information concerning the presentation of the applicants, at the end of the day, to the investigating judges in charge of the case (see paragraph 19 above). 128. The fact remains that the applicants were not brought before the investigating judges – who may certainly be described as “judge[s] or other officer[s] authorised by law to exercise judicial power” within the meaning of Article 5 § 3 of the Convention – until thirteen days after their arrest. 129. The Court points out that in the Brogan and Others case it held that a period of detention in police custody amounting to four days and six hours without judicial review fell outside the strict constraints permitted by Article 5 § 3, even though it was designed to protect the community as a whole from terrorism (see Brogan and Others, cited above, § 62). It also found a period of seven days without being brought before a judge incompatible with Article 5 § 3 (see Öcalan, cited above, §§ 104-05). 130. The Court observes, however, that it did accept, in the Rigopoulos decision (cited above), which concerned the interception on the high seas by the Spanish customs authorities, in the context of an international drug trafficking investigation, of a ship flying the Panamanian flag and the detention of its crew for as long as it took to escort their ship to a Spanish port, that a period of sixteen days was not incompatible with the notion of “promptness” required under Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, in view of the existence of “wholly exceptional circumstances” that justified such a delay. In its decision, the Court noted that the distance to be covered was “considerable” (the ship was 5,500 km from Spanish territory when it was intercepted), and that a forty-three-hour delay caused by resistance put up