34 MEDVEDYEV AND OTHERS v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 110. In any event, the circumstances of the present case differed from the “exceptional circumstances” that justified the Rigopoulos decision. While noting that the Spanish authorities had acted legally in boarding a ship flying a Panamanian flag, Spain and Panama being Parties to the Vienna Convention of 1988, the applicants objected to the fact that their detention on the ship had not been under the supervision of a “judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power” but under that of the public prosecutor, who was not such an officer according to the Court’s case-law (see Schiesser, cited above; Huber v. Switzerland, 23 October 1990, Series A no. 188; and Brincat v. Italy, 26 November 1992, Series A no. 249-A), in particular because of his lack of independence vis-à-vis the executive. They maintained that the purely formal criterion relied on by the Government was ineffective in the light of the functional criterion developed by the Court in its case-law, as confirmed in the Chamber judgment. Thus, unlike the Spanish authorities in the Rigopoulos case, where the deprivation of liberty had been decided by the Central Investigating Court, an officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power within the meaning of Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, by means of a promptly issued, duly reasoned detention order, the French authorities had made no attempt to regularise the applicants’ situation. Yet their ship was not an “area outside the law”, especially considering that an investigating judge could have been contacted by radio, and the crew could have been informed of their rights and allowed to contact a lawyer and alert a family member. In addition to the resulting alleged violation of Article 5 § 3, the applicants, referring to the partially dissenting opinion expressed by three of the Chamber judges, pointed out that they had had to wait another two or three days to be brought before the liberties and detention judge. 2. The Government 111. The Government denied that the applicants had had to wait two or three days after arriving in Brest before they were brought before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power within the meaning of Article 5 § 3. They contended – producing the official reports for the first time before the Grand Chamber – that the applicants had in fact all been presented that very day, only hours after their arrival in Brest, to an investigating judge who had the power to order their release. They further argued that in any event the initial application to the Court concerned only the period of thirteen days it took to reroute the ship to France. 112. The Government reiterated that the notion of promptness had been clarified in the case of Brogan and Others v. the United Kingdom (29 November 1988, Series A no. 145-B), and confirmed recently in McKay (cited above, § 30). They contended, inter alia, that in the Rigopoulos case the Court had found that it was necessary to examine each case with reference to its particular characteristics in order to determine whether the