McCANN AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT 46 3. Conduct and planning of the operation (a) Arguments of those appearing before the Court (1) The applicants 185. The applicants submitted that it would be wrong for the Court, as the Commission had done, to limit its assessment to the question of the possible justification of the soldiers who actually killed the suspects. It must examine the liability of the Government for all aspects of the operation. Indeed, the soldiers may well have been acquitted at a criminal trial if they could have shown that they honestly believed the ungrounded and false information they were given. 186. The soldiers had been told by Officer E (the attack commander) that the three suspects had planted a car bomb in Gibraltar, whereas Soldier G the bomb-disposal expert - had reported that it was merely a suspect bomb; that it was a remote-control bomb; that each of the suspects could detonate it from anywhere in Gibraltar by the mere flicking of a switch and that they would not hesitate to do so the moment they were challenged. In reality, these "certainties" and "facts" were no more than suspicions or at best dubious assessments. However, they were conveyed as facts to soldiers who not only had been trained to shoot at the merest hint of a threat but also, as emerged from the evidence given during the inquest, to continue to shoot until they had killed their target. In sum, they submitted that the killings came about as a result of incompetence and negligence in the planning and conduct of the antiterrorist operation to arrest the suspects as well as a failure to maintain a proper balance between the need to meet the threat posed and the right to life of the suspects. (2) The Government 187. The Government submitted that the actions of the soldiers were absolutely necessary in defence of persons from unlawful violence within the meaning of Article 2 para. 2 (a) (art. 2-2-a) of the Convention. Each of them had to make a split-second decision which could have affected a large number of lives. They believed that the movements which they saw the suspects make at the moment they were intercepted gave the impression that the terrorists were about to detonate a bomb. This evidence was confirmed by other witnesses who saw the movements in question. If it is accepted that the soldiers honestly and reasonably believed that the terrorists upon whom they opened fire might have been about to detonate a bomb by pressing a button, then they had no alternative but to open fire. 188. They also pointed out that much of the information available to the authorities and many of the judgments made by them proved to be accurate.