BOUYID v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT 33 between the police officers in question and the applicants, or to interview or order an interview of the physicians who had drawn up the medical certificates produced by the applicants, or of the person who was with the first applicant when Officer A.Z. had stopped and questioned him in the street on 8 December 2003 (see paragraph 11 above), or of Superintendent K., who had met the second applicant at the latter’s home on 23 February 2004, just after he had left the Saint-Josse-ten-Noode police station (see paragraph 26 above). Such measures might, however, have helped establish the facts. 129. The investigation was therefore mainly confined to interviews of the police officers involved in the incidents by other police officers seconded to the investigation department of Committee P and the preparation by those officers of a report summarising the evidence gathered, once again, by police officers (the internal oversight department of the police district covering the applicants’ neighbourhood), which mainly described the “general behaviour” of the Bouyid family. 130. Furthermore, no reasons were provided for either the submissions of the Crown Prosecutor or the order by the Committals Division of the Brussels Court of First Instance discontinuing the case. Moreover, in upholding that discontinuance order, the Indictments Division of the Brussels Court of Appeal drew almost exclusively on the above-mentioned report concerning the behaviour of the Bouyid family and the denials of the officers charged, without assessing the credibility and seriousness of the applicants’ allegations that they had been slapped by the officers in question. It should also be noted that the Indictment Division’s judgment of 9 April 2008, which contains only a very brief reference to the medical certificate produced by the second applicant, makes no mention at all of the certificate produced by the first applicant. 131. These factors tend to indicate that the investigating authorities failed to devote the requisite attention to the applicants’ allegations – despite their being substantiated by the medical certificates which they had submitted for inclusion in the case file – or to the nature of the act, involving a law-enforcement officer slapping an individual who was completely under his control. 132. Lastly, the Court notes the unusual length of the investigation, for which the Government provided no explanation. The events occurred on 8 December 2003, in the case of the first applicant, and on 23 February 2004, in the case of the second, and the applicants lodged their complaints with Committee P on 9 December 2003 and 23 February 2004 respectively, before bringing a civil-party application on 17 June 2004. However, the discontinuance order was not made until 27 November 2007. As for the judgments of the Indictments Division of the Brussels Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation, they were delivered on 8 April 2008 and 29 October 2008 respectively. Therefore, almost five years elapsed between the first