İLHAN v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 18 on the judgments delivered on 28 March 2000 in the cases of Mahmut Kaya v. Turkey and Kılıç v. Turkey (no. 22535/93, ECHR 2000-III, and no. 22492/93, ECHR 2000-III). 70. Further, the applicant claimed that the authorities had failed to fulfil their obligation under Article 2 to carry out an investigation into the potentially lethal use of force. He referred to the Commission's findings that the public prosecutor was aware that Abdüllatif İlhan had suffered injuries at the time of his apprehension by the gendarmes but relied wholly on the documents submitted by the gendarmes in reaching the conclusion that they resulted from an accident. His decision not to prosecute was largely a formal exercise taken without any effort to obtain information from Abdüllatif İlhan or İbrahim Karahan as to what had occurred. 2. The Government 71. The Government contended that there could be no violation of Article 2 since the alleged victim, Abdüllatif İlhan, was still alive. They disputed that his condition could be described as critical. Nor was he in a coma or near to death, as the medical reports indicated that he could still talk and hear people. His condition had been exaggerated in the testimony of İbrahim Karahan. There had been no element of negligence or oversight in the way in which Abdüllatif İlhan was treated by the gendarmes or hospital staff. In any event, Abdüllatif İlhan had not substantiated that he had been ill-treated by the gendarmes. 72. As Article 2 did not come into play in this case, the obligation of the competent authorities to conduct an effective investigation could not be examined in this context. B. The Court's assessment 1. Concerning the injuries inflicted on Abdüllatif İlhan 73. Article 2, which safeguards the right to life and sets out the circumstances when deprivation of life may be justified, ranks as one of the most fundamental provisions in the Convention, to which no derogation is permitted. Together with Article 3, it also enshrines one of the basic values of the democratic societies making up the Council of Europe. The circumstances in which deprivation of life may be justified must therefore be strictly construed. The object and purpose of the Convention as an instrument for the protection of individual human beings also requires that Article 2 be interpreted and applied so as to make its safeguards practical and effective (see the McCann and Others v. the United Kingdom judgment of 27 September 1995, Series A no. 324, pp. 45-46, §§ 146-47).