EL HASKI v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT 23 66. The Government were of the view that the authorities could not be criticised for failing to carry out an investigation into allegations that were so poorly substantiated. They added that, before the Court, as before the domestic courts, the applicant had failed to adduce any concrete evidence to show that the impugned statements had been taken using torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. 2. The applicant ... 69. As regards the application in the present case of the rule that evidence obtained by means contrary to Article 3 must be excluded, the applicant was of the view that it also applied to evidence obtained by such means in a foreign country, if the object and purpose of the Convention were not to be meaningless. He had reached this conclusion in particular from the wording of Article 15 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, from the case-law of the Committee against Torture and from the above-cited A. and others judgment of the House of Lords. 70. The applicant further argued that the Government had been wrong to conclude from the above-cited Article 15 and the A. and others judgment that the burden of proof lay fully with him to show that the impugned statements had been obtained by a means contrary to Article 3. He observed that the standard adopted by the House of Lords in A. and others consisted in ascertaining whether it was “established, by means of such diligent enquiries into the sources that it [was] practicable to carry out and on a balance of probabilities, that the information [had been] obtained under torture”, and that the highest British court seemed to have concluded that the reports of humanitarian organisations did not suffice to show the “established nature” of torture sustained by a complainant. In his view, having regard to the purpose of the Convention and the need for effective protection of fundamental rights, the burden of proof that lay with a defendant should not, however, be “inaccessible”: it should be considered sufficient for him or her to show the existence of a “real risk” that the evidence had been obtained by torture, and to produce for that purpose the reports of respectable NGOs indicating that, in the country in question, torture was practised systematically. To require a defendant to provide more concrete information when he or she had no means of investigating in a foreign country would be asking the impossible. In other words, the defendant should merely be required to show the “likelihood” of what he or she alleged. The applicant claimed that, for his part, he had made such a demonstration. 71. As regards the statements obtained in Morocco, the applicant claimed that it was not in dispute that this country had been severely