12 HARUTYUNYAN v. ARMENIA JUDGMENT B. Merits 1. The parties’ submissions (a) The Government 52. The Government admitted that the applicant and witnesses T. and A. had been subjected to torture and forced to make statements during the investigation in the military police department on 16 and 17 April 1999. However, Article 105 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) prohibited the use of such evidence. Thus, the domestic courts could not and did not rely on these statements in convicting the applicant. They merely referred to them in their judgments as facts which had taken place, adding that these statements had later been revoked. The domestic courts were obliged under Article 126 of the CCP to compare this evidence with other evidence obtained in the case, and to verify its sources and admissibility. However, it would have been illegal to admit these statements as evidence since both the applicant and the witnesses had already revoked them. Besides, when the applicant was being tried at first instance, criminal proceedings had already been instituted against the military police officers in question, and, by the time the Court of Appeal examined the applicant’s case, these police officers had already been convicted. 53. Furthermore, the Court of Appeal stated in its judgment of 1 April 2003 that “the evidence obtained under coercion in the military police station, which was corroborated by the factual circumstances of the case, had not constituted the basis for charges and had not been used as evidence”. The Court of Appeal also cited all the other evidence, which, taken in its entirety, was sufficient to secure the applicant’s conviction. This included various witness statements, expert opinions and other evidence. Nor did the Court of Cassation rely on the illegally obtained evidence, merely stating in its decision of 8 May 2003 that the evidence in its entirety was sufficient to find the applicant guilty. By such “evidence”, the Court of Cassation was referring only to the statements made by witnesses during the court proceedings. Finally, had the courts based their judgments on the applicant’s confession statement, then the crime committed by the applicant would not have been qualified as “premeditated murder” but as “involuntary manslaughter” since the applicant had confessed to having “accidentally shot serviceman H.”. In sum, neither the Syunik Regional Court nor the Court of Appeal had used the applicant’s confession and the statements of witnesses T. and A., obtained under torture, as a basis for the applicant’s conviction. 54. The Government further submitted that, even assuming that the domestic courts used the statements obtained under torture as a basis for their judgments, there was no violation of Article 6 since the applicant’s