MEDVEDYEV AND OTHERS v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 31 99. On this point the Court observes first of all that the text of the diplomatic note mentions “the ship Winner, flying the Cambodian flag”, the sole object of the agreement, confirming the authorisation to intercept, inspect and take legal action against it (see paragraph 10 above). Evidently, therefore, the fate of the crew was not covered sufficiently clearly by the note and so it is not established that their deprivation of liberty was the subject of an agreement between the two States that could be considered to represent a “clearly defined law” within the meaning of the Court’s case-law. As to the explanatory diplomatic note produced by the Cambodian authorities on 9 September 2008 in response to a request from the French authorities of 3 September 2008 and submitted by the respondent Government for the first time to the Grand Chamber, after the Chamber pronounced its finding of a violation of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention and more than six years after the events, the applicants having had no opportunity at the material time to familiarise themselves with the explanations given, the Court does not consider it decisive. 100. Secondly, the Court considers that the diplomatic note did not meet the “foreseeability” requirement either. Nor have the Government demonstrated the existence of any current and long-standing practice between Cambodia and France in the battle against drug trafficking at sea in respect of ships flying the Cambodian flag; on the contrary, the use of an ad hoc agreement by diplomatic note, in the absence of any permanent bilateral or multilateral treaty or agreement between the two States, attests to the exceptional, one-off nature of the cooperation measure adopted in this case. Added to the fact that Cambodia had not ratified the relevant conventions, this shows that the intervention of the French authorities on the basis of an ad hoc agreement cannot reasonably be said to have been “foreseeable” within the meaning of the Court’s case-law, even with the help of appropriate advice. In any event, the Court considers that the foreseeability, for an offender, of prosecution for drug trafficking should not be confused with the foreseeability of the law pleaded as the basis for the intervention. Otherwise, any activity considered criminal under domestic law would release the States from their obligation to pass laws having the requisite qualities, particularly with regard to Article 5 § 1 of the Convention and, in so doing, deprive that provision of its substance. 101. It is regrettable, in the Court’s view, that the international effort to combat drug trafficking on the high seas is not better coordinated bearing in mind the increasingly global dimension of the problem. The fact remains that when a flag State, like Cambodia in this case, is not a party to the Montego Bay or Vienna Conventions, the insufficiency of such legal instruments, for want of regional or bilateral initiatives, is of no real consequence. In fact, such initiatives are not always supported by the States in spite of the fact that they afford the possibility of acting within a clearly defined legal framework. In any event, for States that are not parties to the