ELCI AND OTHERS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 98 618. In contrast, the applicants submitted, the evidence provided by the Government had been either weak or lacking. Mr Güven's evidence, for example, was qualified as wholly unreliable, being vague and contradictory. He had been unable to provide a single specific example of any message he claimed had been sent by the applicants (paragraph 270 above), and yet this was the main basis for their detention and subsequent prosecution. He implied that he had received little benefit from his confessions. However, he had been released despite the sentence of life imprisonment which had been imposed on him for the murder of two policemen (cf. paragraph 275 above). 619. The applicants contended that the evidence of Dr Eğilmez's was unreliable, given his difficulty in recollecting the present case and the limited nature of his examination in recording signs of blows, force or violence. However, the applicants supported the evidence of Dr Demirel (paragraphs 296-298 above), as being independent and objective. 620. The evidence of Colonel Eşref Hatipoğlu was deemed to be equally unreliable, as well as misleading, given his intolerance of any challenge to his authority and his bad faith in relation to allegations of human rights abuses on the part of the Turkish authorities. In view of his broad jurisdiction, it was unlikely that he had had any personal knowledge of the applicants' conditions of detention. For example, contrary to his contention that a maximum of 20 people would have been held in the Diyarbakır provincial gendarmerie command at the material time, the relevant custody records clearly showed that up to 45 people had been held on a single night (cf. paragraphs 306 and 494 above). He sowed confusion as to the responsible authority for the approval of arrests of the present kind. The purported PKK “hit-list” (paragraph 304 above) was merely presumed to have been smuggled out of prison by a defence lawyer, but was never relied on or referred to during the six year prosecution of the applicants. 621. The applicants considered that Mr Bozoğlu's evidence had been especially unreliable, denying ever having heard allegations of torture despite the fact that such allegations had been made to numerous public officials. They drew particular attention to the evidence of Mr Hatipoğlu and Prosecutor Haney that ill-treatment was inconceivable or raised as a routine defence tactic (paragraphs 307 and 357 above). 622. Prosecutor Haney's evidence (paragraphs 352-364 above) illustrated the failure to investigate and the lack of good faith on the part of the Turkish authorities in dealing with the applicants' allegations. 623. The applicants contended that, apart from the evidence of Mr Durmuş (paragraphs 416-422 above), the evidence of the other Government witnesses to the Commission Delegates had been unreliable, vague and sometimes irrelevant (such as that of Mr Ates, paragraphs 382384 above). 624. The applicants contended that the video recordings were of little evidential value, showing only a small part (1 %) of the interrogation of six