EL HASKI v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT 21 Secondly, he complained that, in finding that he had participated in a leading capacity in the activities of the Moroccan Islamic Fighting Group, the Brussels Court of Appeal, in breach of section 13 of the Belgian Mutual Legal Assistance Act of 9 December 2004, had based its findings decisively on statements that had been obtained in proceedings to which he was not a party, which had taken place in France and Morocco. ... Those statements, he claimed, had been made as a result of treatment in breach of Article 3 of the Convention. ... A. The parties’ submissions 1. The Government ... 63. Thirdly, the Government asked the Court to dismiss the applicant’s argument that the Belgian courts had invoked statements that had been taken in France and Morocco in conditions that breached Article 3 of the Convention. The Government did not dispute the fact that, according to the Court’s case-law, the use by a court of evidence thus obtained would entail a violation of Article 6 § 1, even if the admission of such evidence was not decisive in securing a conviction. In addition, referring in this connection to the judgment of the United Kingdom House of Lords in the case of A. and Others v. Secretary of State for the Home Department (no. 2) and to Article 15 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, of 10 December 1984, they took the view that this principle should also apply where the breach of Article 3 had not been committed by the respondent State. 64. Relying on that same judgment and provision, and also on the El Motassadeq judgment of 14 June 2005 of the Hanseatic Court of Appeal of Hamburg and on the Court’s case-law, the Government nevertheless argued that the exclusionary rule did not apply unless it was clear that the statements in question had been obtained by torture. In their opinion, it was incumbent upon the applicant first to adduce evidence in support of his allegation. In that connection, a mere suspicion was insufficient: the standard of proof “beyond reasonable doubt” applied, bearing in mind that such proof might “follow from the coexistence of sufficiently strong, clear and concordant inferences or of similar unrebutted presumptions of fact”; the applicant must at least be able to allege “on arguable grounds” that such evidence had been obtained as a result of torture. The Government emphasised that the argument whereby an item of evidence had to be excluded if there was a “real risk” that it had been obtained by torture could not be upheld, in the light of the wording of