PART 2: How to Bring a Case to the Court The Court has acknowledged in a number of judgments that the application of the rule of exhaustion must make due allowance for the fact that it is being applied in the context of machinery for the protection of human rights that the Contracting Parties have agreed to establish and that the rule must be applied with some degree of flexibility and without excessive formalism.471 However, the fact remains that a mere doubt as to the effectiveness of domestic remedies does not absolve the applicant of the requirement of exhausting remedies. e) Compliance With Rules of Domestic Procedure When exhausting domestic remedies, applicants are expected to comply with the relevant procedural rules in their domestic jurisdiction. Thus, when an appeal is dismissed without the national court having examined the substance of the appeal because, for example, the applicant failed to lodge it within the applicable time limit, that applicant will be deemed by the Court not to have complied with the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies. The Court further requires that in order for an application to be admissible, complaints made therein must have been raised, at least in substance, before the domestic courts.472 It is not strictly necessary to refer to the Convention Article(s) in domestic proceedings, provided that the substance of the Convention complaint is adequately brought to the attention of the relevant national authorities.473 g) Concluding Remarks As described above, applicants are expected to show in their application forms that they have exhausted relevant domestic remedies and that in doing so they have complied with the relevant domestic rules of procedure and invoked the substance of the Convention complaint in the course of the domestic proceedings. In the context of Article 3, identifying the relevant domestic remedy is perhaps easier than is the case with other Articles of the Convention. As pointed out above, the most appropriate domestic remedy for allegations of ill-treatment will be a criminal investigation since such an investigation will be the best means to establish the accuracy of the allegations as well as being potentially capable of leading to the identification and punishment of those responsible. Furthermore, any decision which is not favourable to the applicant, such as a decision to discontinue the 471 See e.g. Ayder v. Turkey, no. 23656/94, 8 January 2004, § 92. 472 Cardot v. France, no. 11069/84, 19 March 1991, § 34. 473 See e.g. Hudson v. Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (dec.), no. 67128/01, 24 March 2005, in which the applicant’s complaint under Article 3 of the Convention arising from the conditions of his detention in prison was declared inadmissible by the Court because of the applicant’s failure to bring those complaints to the attention of the national authorities. 131