8 HARUTYUNYAN v. ARMENIA JUDGMENT 42. On 14 April 2003 the applicant’s lawyer lodged an appeal. He argued, inter alia, that the applicant’s confession statement of 16 April 1999, and the record and the video recording prepared at the crime scene on the following day, had been made as a result of the beatings, ill-treatment and threats inflicted on the applicant, and could not therefore be used as evidence against him. Furthermore, the Court of Appeal should not have relied on the submissions made by witness T. at the very early stage of the proceedings, including the hearing of 26 October 1999, to justify the credibility of his first accusatory statement, made under torture. These submissions had been the result of the fear experienced by witness T. following the unprecedented violence inflicted on him. He had been under constant pressure from the investigators, having been detained on several occasions, and at the time of the above-mentioned hearing he had not yet been demobilised and was afraid of being taken back into custody and subjected to ill-treatment again. As an example of witness T.’s fear of telling the truth, the applicant’s lawyer referred to T.’s testimony of 30 November 1999, in which he had submitted that the injuries to his fingers had been sustained as a result of his fingers being squashed by a car door. For the last three years, however, since he had revoked his earlier statements, witness T. had been insisting that he was not aware of the circumstances of serviceman H.’s death. Finally, the applicant’s lawyer argued that, contrary to what had been indicated in the Court of Appeal’s judgment, witness A. had never made any accusatory submissions against the applicant during the court examination of the case. On the contrary, he had always insisted that witness T. could not have witnessed the murder since they had been together at the material time. 43. On 8 May 2003 the Court of Cassation dismissed the lawyer’s appeal and upheld the Court of Appeal’s judgment. In doing so, the Court of Cassation found, inter alia, that: “The conclusions in the judgment are corroborated by the evidence examined in court, in particular, statements by [witnesses T., A. and others, and the results of various expert opinions]. ... It has been established that after the incident [servicemen T. and A., the applicant and others] agreed ... to testify that [serviceman H.] had been killed by [the Azeris], nevertheless, [serviceman T.] testified in the first-instance court on 26 October 1999 that [serviceman H.] had been killed ... by [the applicant]. The arguments of [the applicant’s] lawyer that the judgment was based on statements by [witnesses T. and A.] which had been obtained under torture are groundless, contradict the materials of the case and are rebutted by the following evidence. [The applicant and witnesses T. and A. were beaten for several days by the police officers] who demanded that they make honest statements concerning the murder of [serviceman H.]. The police officers did not take any statements from them. The