Article 3 (see the Tekin v. Turkey judgment of 9 June 1998, Reports1998-…, pp. …, §§ 52 and 53). 95. The Court considers that the degree of bruising found by the doctor who examined Mr Assenov (see paragraph 11 above) indicates that the latter’s injuries, whether caused by his father or by the police, were sufficiently serious to amount to ill-treatment within the scope of Article 3 (see, for example, the A. v. the United Kingdom judgment of 23 September 1998, Reports 1998-…, p. …, § 21 and the above-mentioned Ribitsch judgment, pp. 9 and 26, §§ 13 and 39). It remains to be considered whether the State should be held responsible under Article 3 in respect of these injuries. (a) Alleged ill-treatment by the police 96. The Court recalls that the Commission was unable, on the basis of the evidence before it, to establish how the applicant’s injuries were caused (see paragraph 92 above). 97. The Court observes that the doctor who examined Mr Assenov two days after the latter was released from police custody found that the bruises on his body indicated that he had been beaten with a solid object (see paragraph 26 above). The applicant alleged that these injuries had been caused by police officers who beat him with truncheons. 98. The Court considers that, since it is not disputed that the applicant was the victim of violence from some source on 19 September 1992, and since there is no suggestion of anything untoward having occurred between that date and his medical examination, it is fair to assume that he sustained the above bruising on 19 September 1992 in connection with his arrest. 99. The Court further notes that the arresting officer testified in his witness statement that he had seen Mr Ivanov hit his son on the back two or three times with a narrow wooden stick (see paragraph 14 above). It was not denied by the applicants that Mr Ivanov hit Mr Assenov in this way, although it was denied that he did so with the force or frequency required to cause the bruising described in the medical report. Following Mrs Ivanova’s complaint on 2 October 1992, an agent of the DDIA interviewed the applicants and took the above written statement from the arresting officer and statements from the other two officers involved, neither of whom had been present when Mr Ivanov hit Mr Assenov (ibid.). The only independent witness contacted by the DDIA investigator at that time could not remember any disturbance at the bus station (ibid.). In July 1993, unknown to the applicants, witness statements were taken from two other bystanders at the bus station. One of these had only a vague recollection of the events in question. The other, a bus driver, recalled seeing Mr Ivanov hit his son with a lath, although he did not specify how prolonged or violent a beating this had been (see paragraph 28 above). None of the witnesses, except the applicants, said that they had seen police officers hitting Mr Assenov. 100. The Court, like the Commission (see paragraph 92 above), finds it impossible to establish