KURT JUDGMENT OF 25 MAY 1998
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104. The Government replied that the applicant had not substantiated her
allegations that her son had been detained by the security forces.
Accordingly, no issue could arise under Article 2.
105. The Commission found that in the absence of any evidence as to
the fate of Üzeyir Kurt subsequent to his detention in the village, it would
be inappropriate to draw the conclusion that he had been a victim of a
violation of Article 2. It disagreed with the applicant’s argument that it
could be inferred that her son had been killed either from the lifethreatening context she described or from an alleged administrative practice
of disappearances in the respondent State. In the Commission’s opinion, the
applicant’s allegation as to the apparent forced disappearance of her son and
the alleged failure of the authorities to take reasonable steps to safeguard
him against the risks to his life attendant on his disappearance fell to be
considered under Article 5 of the Convention.
106. The Court recalls at the outset that it has accepted the
Commission’s findings of fact in respect of the detention of the applicant’s
son by soldiers and village guards on 25 November 1993. Almost four and a
half years have passed without information as to his subsequent
whereabouts or fate. In such circumstances the applicant’s fears that her son
may have died in unacknowledged custody at the hands of his captors
cannot be said to be without foundation. She has contended that there are
compelling grounds for drawing the conclusion that he has in fact been
killed.
107. However, like the Commission, the Court must carefully scrutinise
whether there does in fact exist concrete evidence which would lead it to
conclude that her son was, beyond reasonable doubt, killed by the
authorities either while in detention in the village or at some subsequent
stage. It also notes in this respect that in those cases where it has found that
a Contracting State had a positive obligation under Article 2 to conduct an
effective investigation into the circumstances surrounding an alleged
unlawful killing by the agents of that State, there existed concrete evidence
of a fatal shooting which could bring that obligation into play (see the
above-mentioned McCann and Others judgment; and the Kaya v. Turkey
judgment of 19 February 1998, Reports 1998-I).
108. It is to be observed in this regard that the applicant’s case rests
entirely on presumptions deduced from the circumstances of her son’s initial
detention bolstered by more general analyses of an alleged officially
tolerated practice of disappearances and associated ill-treatment and extrajudicial killing of detainees in the respondent State. The Court for its part
considers that these arguments are not in themselves sufficient to
compensate for the absence of more persuasive indications that her son did