125. The Court has repeatedly held that persecution and harassment of members of the legal profession strikes at the very heart of the Convention system. Therefore, searches of lawyers ' homes or offices should be subject Elçi and Others v. Turkey to especially strict scrutiny (see , nos. 23145/93 Xavier Da Silveira v. France and 25091/94, § 669, 13 November 2003; , Leotsakos v. Greece no. 43757/05, § 41, 21 January 2010; and , no. 30958/13, § 42, 4 October 2018; see also international legal materials on the protection of lawyer-client relationship, paragraphs 102-105 above). To determine whether the measures were 'necessary in a democratic society', the Court has to ascertain whether effective safeguards against abuse or arbitrariness were available under domestic law and how those safeguards operated in the specific cases under examination. Elements to be taken into consideration in this regard are the severity of the offence in connection with which the search and seizure were effected, whether they were carried out pursuant to an order issued by a judge or a judicial officer or subjected to after-the-fact judicial scrutiny, whether the order was based on reasonable suspicion, and whether its scope was reasonably limited. The Court must also review the manner in which the search was executed, including - where a lawyer ' s office is concerned - whether it was carried out in the presence of an independent observer or whether other special safeguards were available to ensure that material covered by legal professional privilege was not removed. The Court must lastly take into account the extent of the possible repercussions on the work and the reputation of the persons Yuditskaya affected by the search (see , cited above, § 27). 126. Turning to the present cases, the Court observes that in only one of fifteen applications (application no. 11264/04) was the applicant advocate officially suspected of having committed a criminal offence - libel of a judge. In the other fourteen applications the applicants were lawyers who were not under criminal investigation. In two applications (application nos. 32324/06 and 26067/08) the searches had been authorised in respect of the applicants ' relatives, who were suspected of criminal offences. In the other twelve applications, the lawyers ' premises were searched because their clients were under investigation and thus the lawyers might have been in possession of some useful information about them. 127. The court search warrants, where issued, indicated that the material submitted from the criminal cases had provided sufficient grounds to believe that documents or objects relevant to the investigation could be located on the applicants ' premises (see paragraphs 7, 12, 20, 24, 32, 37, 47, 56, 59, 67, 70, 74, 76 and 79 above). They did not however explain what those materials were or on what grounds the belief that the relevant evidence might be found at the premises to be searched was based (see, as a Aliyev v. Azerbaijan recent authority, , nos. 68762/14 and 71200/14, § 184, 20 September 2018). The court search warrants were couched in very broad terms, giving the investigators unrestricted discretion as to how to carry out