PART 2: How to Bring a Case to the Court in and of itself to guarantee a remedy for victims and problems often arise in the context of the enforcement of those national laws. One of the most common problems is the reluctance of authorities to investigate allegations of ill-treatment by State agents.438 In such circumstances, an applicant who has brought his or her complaint of ill-treatment before the relevant investigating authority, which remains passive in the face of those allegations, will be expected to submit his or her application to the Court as soon as he or she becomes aware of the ineffectiveness of the remedy. Failure to do so may result in the application being declared inadmissible for non-compliance with the six-month rule.439 An example of ineffective criminal procedures involving Article 3 of the Convention provides the case of Menteş and Others v. Turkey.440 This case concerned the deliberate destruction of the applicants’ home and possessions by members of the security forces in south-east Turkey. The Turkish Government had submitted to the Court a number of decisions of the Turkish Administrative Courts, in which the plaintiffs had been awarded compensation for the destruction of their homes and possessions in a non-fault based procedure under Article 125 of the Constitution that did not require them to establish that their property had been destroyed deliberately. Having examined the decisions, the Court found that despite the extent of the problem of village destruction, there appears to be no example of compensation being awarded in respect of allegations that property has been purposely destroyed by members of the security forces or of prosecutions having been brought against them in respect of such allegations.441 The Court, concluding that the remedy in question was not effective for the purposes of the Convention because it did not establish culpability and therefore it did not lead to the prosecution and punishment of those responsible for the destruction, proceeded to dismiss the Government’s objection to the admissibility of the application. Other examples in which the Court found ineffective criminal procedures are a series of Russian cases concerning disappearances that took place in Chechnya and Ingushetia between 1999 and 2006. For instance, the Court considered common shortcomings of the criminal investigations442 and ruled that applicants need not 438 See for example, Khashiyev and Akayeva v. Russia, nos. 57942/00 and 57045/00, 24 February 2005, § 145, in which the Court observed that although the domestic courts had found that the killings of the first applicant’s relatives had been perpetrated by servicemen and awarded the first applicant damages against the State, they did not prosecute those servicemen. In the same judgment the Court also found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on account of a lack of thorough and effective investigation into the applicants’ allegations of ill-treatment, see § 180. 439 For further information, see section 2.5.2 (c). 440 Menteş and Others v. Turkey, no. 23186/94, 28 November 1997. 441 Ibid., § 59. 442 The shortcomings identified included “delays in the opening of the proceedings and in the taking of essential steps; lengthy periods of inactivity; failure to take vital investigative steps, 125