20 MEDVEDYEV AND OTHERS v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 2. The Government 49. In their preliminary observations the Government stressed that the events in this case had taken place on the high seas, so that it was necessary to take into account the specificities of the maritime environment and of navigation at sea. In the Government’s submissions this had two specific consequences. First of all, the Convention was completely silent about maritime matters and the Government argued that it was possible to draw a parallel with the solution adopted by the Court in cases concerning the handing over of persons by one State to another in the context of extradition (see Öcalan v. Turkey [GC], no. 46221/99, ECHR 2005-IV; Freda v. Italy, no. 8916/80, Commission decision of 7 October 1980, Decisions and Reports (DR) 21, p. 254; Altmann (Barbie) v. France, no. 10689/83, Commission decision of 4 July 1984, DR 37, p. 230; and Sánchez Ramirez v. France, no. 28780/95, Commission decision of 24 June 1996, DR 86-A, p. 155). The Government considered that “the same reasoning, mutatis mutandis, could be applied in this case” for want of any provision in the Convention concerning arrangements for rerouting ships, or specific provisions concerning maritime matters, which made the Convention inapplicable ratione materiae. 50. Secondly, they submitted that freedom to come and go on board a ship had more restrictive limits, which were the confines of the ship itself: the lawful rerouting of a ship therefore necessarily authorised restrictions on the movements of the people on board; the specificities and the risks of navigation at sea justified the extensive powers enjoyed by ships’ captains. The Government inferred that the applicants had not been deprived of their liberty within the meaning of Article 5 but had been subjected to restrictions of liberty that were justified, restrictions they were challenging on a purely formalistic and litigious basis. The Government submitted that Article 5 of the Convention was not applicable in the present case. 51. In the alternative, on the merits, the Government submitted that the deprivation of liberty imposed on the applicants for the thirteen days during which the Winner had been rerouted had been lawful, and disputed the findings of the Chamber. 52. The lawfulness of the measure had to be examined from two points of view, that of public international law and that of domestic law. 53. With regard to public international law, the Government pointed out that the Winner had been flying no flag and had refused to identify itself. The ship’s crew had therefore deliberately placed itself in the situation provided for in Article 110 of the Montego Bay Convention, which provided expressly for a warship to be able to stop a ship that is “refusing to show its flag”, a principle unanimously accepted under the law of the sea. 54. The Government considered in any event that the agreement given by Cambodia to the French authorities by diplomatic note had made the intervention of the French navy perfectly lawful from the international law