Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Practitioner’s Handbook It follows, therefore, that a Contracting Party’s obligation will begin as soon as its agents detain a person, regardless of whether that person is subsequently placed in a detention facility. Regarding the second aspect – the duration of the obligation to account for a detainee’s fate – the Contracting Parties’ obligation to protect a detained person continues until that person is released. It appears from the Court’s case law that it is incumbent on the Contracting Party to show that the person is released. This issue is well illustrated by the judgment in the case of Süheyla Aydın v. Turkey,201 in which the applicant’s husband was arrested and detained at a police station. He was then brought before a judge at the courthouse who ordered his release on 4 April 1994. However, he never emerged from that courthouse and on 9 April 1994 his body was found in a field some 40 kilometres away. The Government argued that the applicant’s husband had been released on 4 April 1994 and responsibility for his subsequent death could not be attributed to agents of the State. The Commission held a fact-finding hearing in Turkey to hear a number of witnesses, but the respondent Government failed to identify and summon police officers who had accompanied the applicant’s husband to the court house on 4 April 1994. Furthermore, the Government failed to produce any documents to prove that the applicant’s husband had indeed been released. The Court concluded in its judgment of 24 May 2005 that: [i]n the light of the above-mentioned failure of the Government to identify and summon the police officers who accompanied Necati Aydın to the Diyarbakır Court on 4 April 1994, coupled with the absence of a release document, the Court concludes that the Government have failed to discharge their burden of proving that Necati Aydın was indeed released from the Diyarbakır Court building on 4 April 1994. The Court finds it established that Necati Aydın remained in the custody of the State. It follows that the Government’s obligation is engaged to explain how Necati Aydın was killed while still in the hands of State agents. Given that no such explanation has been put forward by the Government, the Court concludes that the Government have failed to account for the killing of Necati Aydın.202 In this judgment the Court also referred to Article 11 of the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance (United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/133 of 18 December 1992). This Article provides that [a]ll persons deprived of liberty must be released in a manner permitting reliable verification that they have actually been released and, further, have been released in conditions in which their physical integrity and ability fully to exercise their rights are assured.203 201 Süheyla Aydın v. Turkey, no. 25660/94, 24 May 2005. 202 Ibid., § 154. 203 Ibid., § 153. 78