24 MEDVEDYEV AND OTHERS v. FRANCE JUDGMENT recognised and defined the extraterritorial exercise of jurisdiction by the relevant State (ibid., § 73). 66. In the instant case, the Court notes that a French warship, the frigate Lieutenant de vaisseau Le Hénaff, was specially instructed by the French naval authorities to intercept the Winner, and that the frigate sailed out of Brest harbour on that mission carrying on board the French navy commando unit Jaubert, a special forces team specialised in boarding vessels at sea. When the Winner was spotted off Cape Verde on 13 June 2002, the frigate issued several warnings and fired warning shots, before firing directly at the merchant ship, under orders from France’s maritime prefect for the Atlantic. When they boarded the Winner, the French commando team were obliged to use their weapons to defend themselves, and subsequently kept the crew members under their exclusive guard and confined them to their cabins during the journey to France, where they arrived on 26 June 2002. The rerouting of the Winner to France, by a decision of the French authorities, was made possible by sending a tug out of Brest harbour to tow the ship back to the French port, escorted by another warship, the frigate Commandant Bouan, all under orders from the maritime prefect and at the request of the Brest public prosecutor. 67. That being so, the Court considers that, as this was a case of France having exercised full and exclusive control over the Winner and its crew, at least de facto, from the time of its interception, in a continuous and uninterrupted manner until they were tried in France, the applicants were effectively within France’s jurisdiction for the purposes of Article 1 of the Convention (contrast Banković and Others, cited above). 2. The Government’s preliminary observations 68. The Court notes at the outset that the Government contended for the first time before the Grand Chamber, in their preliminary observations, that the applicants’ complaints were incompatible ratione materiae with the provisions of Article 5 of the Convention, their observations on the merits being submitted only “in the alternative”. 69. The Grand Chamber reiterates that it is not precluded from deciding in appropriate cases questions concerning the admissibility of an application under Article 35 § 4 of the Convention, as that provision enables the Court to dismiss applications it considers inadmissible “at any stage of the proceedings” (see Odièvre v. France [GC], no. 42326/98, § 22, ECHR 2003-III; Azinas v. Cyprus [GC], no. 56679/00, § 32, ECHR 2004-III; Yumak and Sadak v. Turkey [GC], no. 10226/03, § 72, ECHR 2008; and Mooren v. Germany [GC], no. 11364/03, § 57, 9 July 2009). Under Rule 55 of the Rules of Court, any plea of inadmissibility must, in so far as its character and the circumstances permit, be raised by the respondent Contracting Party in its observations on the admissibility of the application submitted as provided in Rule 54 (compare N.C. v. Italy [GC],