Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Practitioner’s Handbook The Court found the applicants’ allegations of ill-treatment to be substantiated but it based its decision on evidence obtained by the Commission which had held fact-finding missions in Turkey during which members of the Commission questioned the applicants and a number of eye-witnesses.157 The lack of medical evidence obtained immediately after the period of detention may therefore be compensated by obtaining evidence in situ. However, and as pointed out earlier, the Court holds fact-finding hearings in only a small number of cases and for this reason applicants should consider obtaining independent medical reports as soon as possible after their release from custody. The probative value of independent medical reports is increased if those reports have been brought to the attention of the national authorities. Bringing the evidence to the attention of the national authorities is also critically important for the requirement of exhaustion of domestic remedies. For example, in the case of Dizman v. Turkey,158 the applicant had been taken away from a café by plain-clothes police officers who ill-treated him in a deserted field. He was then released and taken to a hospital by his relatives the same day. The medical examination and x-rays taken in the course of that examination revealed that his jaw had been broken and required surgery. The following day the applicant submitted the x-rays to the attention of the prosecutor and made an official complaint about the ill-treatment. In response, the prosecutor sent the applicant to the Forensic Medicine Directorate where he obtained another medical report, confirming that his jaw had been broken. The police officers were subsequently tried but acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence, in particular, due to the fact that the medical report in question had been obtained two days after the alleged event. The Strasbourg Court accepted the accuracy of the applicant’s allegations of ill-treatment and noted that neither the respondent Government nor any other domestic authority had contacted the hospital where the applicant claimed to have been examined and where x-rays were taken immediately after his release in order to verify the accuracy of the applicant’s statement.159 Similarly, in the case of Balogh v. Hungary,160 the applicant alleged that he had been beaten in the course of his interrogation by police. However, the applicant did not obtain a medical examination until two days after his release. He claimed that: 157 For a review of the issue of the role of medical evidence in international human rights tribunals, see Camille Giffard and Nigel Rodley, “The Approach of International Tribunals to Medical Evidence in Cases Involving Allegations of Torture”, in Michael Peel and Vincent Iacopino, (eds.), The Medical Documentation of Torture, Greenwich Medical Media Limited, 2002, pp. 19–43. 158 Dizman v. Turkey, no. 27309/95, 20 September 2005. 159 Ibid., §§ 75–76. 160 Balogh v. Hungary, no. 47940/99, 20 July 2004. 70