GÄFGEN v. GERMANY JUDGMENT 41 circumstances, the Court is persuaded that, in accordance with the requirements of its case-law, the applicant raised the substance of his complaint under Article 6 in the proceedings before the Federal Court of Justice. In particular, it cannot speculate as to whether the Federal Public Prosecutor’s possibly different interpretation of the scope of the applicant’s appeal was adopted by that court. As the applicant again argued before the Federal Constitutional Court that the use of the unconstitutional methods of investigation should have entailed a prohibition on the admission of the impugned items of evidence at his trial (see paragraph 40 above), the Court finds that he raised the substance of his complaint under Article 6 throughout the proceedings before the domestic courts. 145. The Court further observes that the applicant, in addition, argued before the Regional Court, the Federal Court of Justice and the Federal Constitutional Court that the criminal proceedings against him ought to have been discontinued because of the use of unconstitutional methods of investigation (see paragraphs 24, 37 and 40 above). As with his application mentioned above (see paragraph 144), this request concerned the legal consequences in a criminal trial of the use of evidence obtained by prohibited methods of interrogation in pre-trial investigation proceedings. The Federal Constitutional Court declared his constitutional complaint on this account inadmissible for failure to substantiate it sufficiently. The Court notes, however, that in its decision, the Federal Constitutional Court confirmed that the police officers’ threat to inflict pain on the applicant in the investigation proceedings had violated human dignity and the prohibition on subjecting the applicant to ill-treatment, as enshrined in the Basic Law. That court further held that the procedural flaw of having applied unconstitutional methods of investigation had been sufficiently remedied by the criminal courts by the exclusion from trial of the statements made under threat and had not, in addition, required the discontinuation of the criminal proceedings (see paragraphs 42-44 above). The Court considers that through these observations, the Constitutional Court examined, at least partly, the substance of the applicant’s constitutional complaint concerning the discontinuation of the criminal proceedings against him. Therefore, nonexhaustion of domestic remedies cannot be held against him in this respect either. 146. The Court finds that the applicant thus provided the domestic courts with the opportunity to put right the alleged violation and concludes that the Government’s objection of non-exhaustion of domestic remedies must be dismissed.