PART 2: How to Bring a Case to the Court the salient fact that in both situations the events in issue lie wholly, or in large part, within the exclusive knowledge of the authorities. It is appropriate, therefore, that in cases such as the present one, where it is the non-disclosure by the Government of crucial documents in their exclusive possession which is preventing the Court from establishing the facts, it is for the Government either to argue conclusively why the documents in question cannot serve to corroborate the allegations made by the applicants, or to provide a satisfactory and convincing explanation of how the events in question occurred, failing which an issue under Article 2 and/or Article 3 of the Convention will arise.123 Observing that the Government had failed to make any argument from which it could be deduced that the documents withheld by them contained no information bearing on the applicants’ claims, the Court went on to examine the investigation carried out at the national level in order to establish whether the respondent Government had discharged its burden. Having established that the domestic investigation was defective in many ways, the Court found that the Government had failed to account for the killings and also for the mutilation of one of the bodies, in violation of Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention. iii) Concluding Remarks There is an understandable difficulty in obtaining evidence in ill-treatment cases. Because of the nature of ill-treatment, perpetrators are usually the only persons to witness it and they are therefore in a position to cover up their criminal actions. Such a cover-up will make it very difficult to establish the accuracy of allegations even if the authorities do have the will to investigate them. In certain circumstances, perhaps less frequent, perpetrators will not be deterred from ill-treating people publicly and will not even make attempts to cover up their actions because of the tolerance displayed by the authorities towards such actions. In such cases the authorities will not secure the evidence implicating State agents in the ill-treatment. Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that in most instances the victim will have difficulties supporting his or her case with “hard” evidence. It is in light of this fact that the Court’s unique rules of evidence pertaining to the burden of proof must be examined. Burden-shifting compensates for the superior situation of a respondent Contracting Party vis-à-vis an individual and maximises the opportunity for the Court to establish the truth. Needless to say, a respondent Government will not bear the burden of disproving each allegation of ill-treatment made against it. The rules discussed above relating to the burden of proof are employed by the Court only after it has decided that the allegations are not manifestly ill-founded. Furthermore, the Court will also require the applicant to be consistent in his or her allegations throughout the proceedings. For example, in the case of Akkum and Others v. Turkey,224 the 223 Ibid., § 211. 83