ELCI AND OTHERS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 94 22 November to 3 December 1992, its delegation was inundated with allegations of torture and ill-treatment. Numerous persons examined by its doctors displayed marks or conditions consistent with their allegations. It listed a number of these cases. At the headquarters of the Ankara and Diyarbakır Security Directorates, it found equipment that could have been used for torture and the presence of which had no other credible explanation. The CPT concluded in its statement that “the practice of torture and other forms of severe ill-treatment of persons in police custody remains widespread in Turkey”. 599. In its second public statement, issued on 6 December 1996, the CPT noted that some progress had been made over the intervening four years. However, its findings after its visit in 1994 demonstrated that torture and other forms of ill-treatment were still important characteristics of police custody. In the course of visits in 1996, CPT delegations once again found clear evidence of the practice of torture and other forms of severe illtreatment by the police. It referred to its most recent visit in September 1996 to police establishments. It noted the cases of seven persons who had been very recently detained at the headquarters of the anti-terrorism branch of the Istanbul Security Directorate and which ranked among the most flagrant examples of torture encountered by CPT delegations in Turkey. It concluded that resort to torture and other forms of severe ill-treatment remained a common occurrence in police establishments in Turkey. THE LAW I. THE GOVERNMENT'S PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS 600. The Government contended that the applicants had failed to exhaust the remedies available to them under constitutional, criminal, civil and administrative law, of which remedies they were fully aware as they were all practising lawyers. Their failure to do so undermined the Court's subsidiary protection role. The Government noted that this submission had previously been rejected by the Commission, which they alleged had developed a special exhaustion theory with regard to Turkey alone. 601. The Government submitted that the Court should now dismiss the present case for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies. 602. Alternatively, the Government contended that the applicants' complaints under Articles 3, 5 and 8 of the Convention, Article 1 of Protocol No.1 and former Article 25 of the Convention were anyway groundless. They therefore requested the Court to review the Commission's decision on admissibility (former Article 29 of the Convention, now