22 MAMATKULOV AND ASKAROV v. TURKEY JUDGMENT added that the applicants had been visited in prison in Uzbekistan by two officials from the Turkish embassy whom they had informed that they had not been subjected to ill-treatment either before or after their trial. 64. The Government argued that Article 3 was not to be construed in a way that would engage the extraditing State's responsibility indefinitely. The State's responsibility should end once the extradited person had been found guilty and had started to serve his or her sentence. It would be straining the language of Article 3 intolerably to hold that by surrendering a suspect in accordance with the terms of an extradition agreement, the extraditing State had subjected him to the treatment or punishment he received after his conviction and sentence in the receiving State. Such a decision would interfere with rights under international treaties and conflict with the norms of international judicial process, as it would entail adjudication on the internal affairs of foreign States that were not Parties to the Convention. There was a risk that it would cause serious harm to the Contracting State by restricting its ability to cooperate in the fight against international terrorism and organised crime. 3. Third-party interveners 65. Human Rights Watch and the AIRE Centre referred to the repression of independent Muslims in Uzbekistan at the material time; in particular, they said that close relatives of the applicants' co-accused had been subjected to torture and political prisoners had died as a result of illtreatment received in Uzbek prisons. Furthermore, in view of the political situation obtaining in Uzbekistan and the lack of effective judicial supervision of the security forces, the assurances that had been obtained from the Uzbek government did not constitute a sufficient guarantee for the applicants. C. The Court's assessment 1. The relevant principles 66. The Contracting States have the right, as a matter of well-established international law and subject to their treaty obligations, including the Convention, to control the entry, residence and expulsion of aliens. The right to political asylum is not contained in either the Convention or its Protocols (see Vilvarajah and Others v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 30 October 1991, Series A no. 215, p. 34, § 102). 67. It is the settled case-law of the Court that extradition by a Contracting State may give rise to an issue under Article 3, and hence engage the responsibility of that State under the Convention, where substantial grounds have been shown for believing that the person in