6.  The applicants were born in 1982 and 1983 respectively and are currently serving sentences in penal facilities in the Republic of Komi and the Murmansk Region respectively. 7.  On 25 and 19 September 2002 respectively the applicants were arrested in Grozny in the Chechen Republic and taken to the Operational‑Search Division of the North Caucasus Operations Department of the Chief Directorate of the Russian Ministry of the Interior in the Southern Federal Circuit (ОРБ-2 СКОУ ГУ МВД РФ по ЮФО  hereinafter “ORB-2”). After their arrest they were taken to the temporary detention facility at ORB-2 (hereinafter “the IVS”). Official records of the applicants’ arrest were drawn up on 30 and 24 September 2002 respectively. Throughout this time the applicants remained without legal assistance. Their families were unaware of their whereabouts. 8.  According to the applicants, for several days during their unrecorded detention they were repeatedly ill‑treated by officers of ORB-2 and forced into confessing to being members of an illegal armed group in Grozny, and to the murders of several people, including police officers and military servicemen. 9.  The applicants described in detail the circumstances of the alleged ill‑treatment. They submitted, in particular, that the officers of ORB-2 had punched and kicked them, beat them up with truncheons, administered electric shocks while putting gas masks or plastic bags over their heads, and had threatened them with rape and blackmail. According to the second applicant, he was also beaten over the head with a plastic bottle filled with water while his head was pressed against the floor. Furthermore, the perpetrators jumped on his head with all their weight, burnt his back with cigarette butts, beat his fingers with a varnished stick while his hands were pressed against a table, and threatened to pierce his hands with staples and shoot him. The applicants alleged that two of the perpetrators had been officers Yakh. and Gul. 10.  Once the applicants’ arrests were formalised, they reiterated their confession statements in the presence of the chief investigator, S., and two legal aid lawyers, Ts. and D. The applicants confirmed that they had made their statements voluntarily. According to them, officers Yakh. and Gul. were both present during their interviews. 11.  When questioning the second applicant on 24 September 2002 in the presence of D. and officer Yakh., S. lifted up his shirt and saw marks of beatings on his back (bruises, marks from electric wires and swellings). When asked how they had been caused, the second applicant said that he had fallen down the stairs. Several days later he told D. that he had received the injuries in a fight with his brother. 12.  On 18 and 22 December 2002 respectively the applicants were transferred from the IVS to remand prison IZ-20/2 in Chernokozovo in the Naurskiy District of northern Chechnya. 13.  The Government failed to submit the applicants’ medical documents for the period between September and December 2002, relying on the fact that they must have been destroyed following the expiry of their storage time-limit. 14.  The Government provided a copy of a register of medical examinations of persons admitted to IZ-20/2 in the period between 26 November 2002 and 4 October 2003. The entries concerning both applicants state “no bodily injuries”. 15.  After their transfer to the remand prison in December 2002 the applicants made several complaints to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Chechen Republic of their having been subjected to torture while in police custody at ORB-2. However, the institution of criminal proceedings was refused. On 3 December 2003 the investigator S. submitted as follows:
“Following their transfer to the SIZO in Grozny there was a flow of complaints and applications. At the present time I cannot remember the exact dates when the decisions on the applicants’ complaints and applications were made.” 16.  On 14 and 18 April 2003 S. refused to institute criminal proceedings into the second applicant’s complaints of ill-treatment. The decisions were taken on the basis of statements by officers Gul. and Yakh., who denied using any physical force against him. It appears that a further complaint of ill-treatment submitted on 9 July 2003 to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Chechen Republic received no reply. 17.  On 25 November 2003, during the course of the trial, the applicants complained to the court that during their unrecorded detention (between 25 and 30 September in respect of the first applicant and between 19 and 24 September in respect of the second applicant) they had been subjected to torture involving electric shocks, gas masks, beatings and threats by officers of ORB-2 and forced into making a confession. The applicants alleged that one of the perpetrators had been the chief operational officer, Yakh. 18.  On the same day the Rostov Regional Court (“the Regional Court”) requested the Prosecutor’s Office of the Chechen Republic to conduct an inquiry into the applicants’ allegations. 19.  On 8 December 2003 D., an investigator from the Leninskiy district prosecutor’s office of Grozny, having questioned S. (the investigator in charge of the pre-trial investigation in the criminal case against the applicants), Yakh. (the chief operational officer of ORB-2), T. (the legal aid lawyer for the applicants’ co-defendant) and Ts. (the legal aid lawyer for the first applicant), as well as M. (an attesting witness in several investigative activities), refused to open a criminal investigation into the applicants’ complaints of ill-treatment for lack of evidence that a crime had been committed. The decision, in so far as it concerns the applicants, reads as follows:
“[S.] submitted that he had been in charge of the pre-trial investigation of the criminal case [against the applicants] and that operational assistance had been provided by officers of [ORB-2], including the chief operational officer, Yakh.
After their arrest [the applicants] were placed in the temporary detention facility at [ORB-2], following which they were transferred to remand prison [illegible]. ... During the initial pre-trial investigation [the applicants] made no complaints of having been subjected to any unlawful methods of investigation. However, they subsequently made [relevant] complaints, which were decided by [S.] in the framework of the criminal case under investigation. On each occasion the [applicants’] arguments were not objectively confirmed and it was decided [that a criminal investigation would not be instituted]; he could not remember the dates of the relevant decisions ... [The applicants made their statements of their own free will; they were not subjected to any violence; all investigative measures were carried out with the participation of legal aid lawyers].
The legal aid lawyer Ts. submitted that she had represented [the first applicant] from 30 September 2002 until the end of the preliminary investigation. During the course of the preliminary investigation [the first applicant] had not complained of having been subjected to unlawful methods of investigation and physical violence, and Ts. had not lodged any complaints of ill-treatment with the prosecutor’s office on [the first applicant’s] behalf.
...
[Yakh.] submitted that ... no physical violence had been used against [the applicants] by the officers of [ORB-2], and that [the applicants] had made their statements of their own free will.” 20.  On 9 December 2003 the presiding judge received a copy of the above-mentioned decision and read it out in court. 21.  The trial court further questioned S. and the attesting witness M., who submitted that no physical force had been used against the applicants, who had made all their statements voluntarily and without coercion. S. admitted that when he had questioned the applicants at ORB-2 they had been handcuffed to the radiator to prevent them escaping. 22.  On 18 and 30 December 2003 and 12 April 2004 the applicants’ lawyer asked the trial court to exclude the evidence obtained from the applicants under torture, but the requests were dismissed. 23.  During the submissions the presiding judge allowed the prosecutor to amend one of the charges against the applicants in so far as it concerned a change to the date of the alleged murder of P. (from 30 to 29 May 2001). 24.  On 11 May 2004 the Regional Court convicted the applicants, along with another co-defendant, of membership of an illegal armed group, several counts of murder, attempts on the life of law-enforcement officers and illegal possession of firearms. They were sentenced to twenty‑five years’ imprisonment. The applicants’ conviction was based on self‑incriminating statements given by the defendants during the pre-trial investigation in the period between September and December 2002 while they had been on the premises of ORB-2 (records of their questioning as suspects, records of their questioning as accused, records of confrontation between the parties, records of crime-scene examinations), and the findings of forensic medical examinations. The court also relied on statements by prosecution witnesses, including Ts., L. and K., and victims, although these did not link the applicants to the crimes they had been charged with. Despite the court’s rulings, most of the prosecution witnesses and the victims did not attend the trial. Having regard to the challenging social situation in the Chechen Republic, where the witnesses in question lived, the court used the statements obtained from them at the pre-trial stage as evidence. The defence witnesses were all heard during the trial and provided alibis for the applicants. The court, however, excluded their testimony, as they were all either their relatives or friends. The court decided that the applicants’ sentences should start to run from 25 and 19 September 2002 respectively. 25.  The applicants appealed, claiming, inter alia, that they had been subjected to ill-treatment during the pre-trial investigation and convicted on the basis of evidence obtained under torture, that they had not been afforded an opportunity to examine the prosecution witnesses and the victims, and that during the submissions the presiding judge had allowed the prosecutor to amend one of the charges against them, thereby violating their right to defence. Attached to the second applicant’s appeal were witness statements by D., the legal aid lawyer who had represented him during the pre-trial investigation. The relevant part reads as follows:
“On 24 September 2002, when [the second applicant] was being questioned as a suspect, we saw that his back was covered in bruises. I agreed to make the relevant submissions to the [Regional Court]. However, somebody has misled the trial court, stating that I had “flatly refused to make any depositions”. I was not questioned during the pre-investigation inquiry, nor [did I] give any depositions to anybody except the lawyer [representing the applicants during the trial].” 26.  On 18 August 2004 the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the judgment on appeal and reduced the applicants’ sentences to twenty-three and twenty‑four years’ imprisonment respectively. The court held that the applicants’ allegations had been reasonably found to be unsubstantiated, and that the difficult social situation in Chechnya could account for the inability to secure the attendance of the prosecution witnesses and victims. The appellate court found that the amendment of one of the charges against the applicants had not violated the applicants’ right to defence since, in any event, in the statements made during the pre-trial investigation they had mentioned having committed the crime “in around the spring of 2001” and furthermore during the trial had denied committing it at all. 27.  On 25 October 2013 the Ust-Vymskiy District Court of the Republic of Komi reviewed the first applicant’s sentence in line with amendments to the criminal law and reduced it to twenty-two years’ imprisonment. 28.  Following communication of the applicants’ complaint of ill‑treatment to the Government in October 2011, on 6 December 2011 the prosecutor of the Leninskiy district of Grozny quashed as unlawful and unsubstantiated the decision of 8 December 2003 refusing to institute a criminal investigation into the applicants’ complaints of ill-treatment. An additional pre-investigation inquiry was ordered, so that the applicants could be questioned concerning the circumstances of the alleged ill‑treatment, the identity of the alleged perpetrators, the injuries allegedly sustained as a result of the ill-treatment and any requests made for medical assistance in this connection. 29.  The case file contains no further information about the outcome of the additional pre-investigation inquiry. 30.  Following the applicants’ conviction, in September 2004 their families requested the head of the Rostov Regional Department of the Russian Federal Penal Authority (“the FSIN”) to allocate them to penal facilities in regions adjacent to their home region, the Chechen Republic. 31.  In November 2004 the first applicant was allocated to a strict-regime correctional colony in the Republic of Komi, located over 3,000 kilometres from the Chechen Republic. 32.  In December 2004 the second applicant was allocated to a strict‑regime correctional colony in the Omsk Region, located over 3,400 kilometres from the Chechen Republic. 33.  On 22 August 2005 the first applicant’s family asked the head of the FSIN to transfer him to a penal facility in a less remote region. They referred, in particular, to his state of health (tuberculosis) and indicated that appropriate facilities were available in the Republic of Kalmykia. Their request was rejected. 34.  The second applicant and his family lodged requests with the Omsk regional prosecutor, the head of the FSIN, the Prosecutor General of Russia and the Ombudsman for the Omsk Region seeking the applicant’s transfer to a less remote penal facility. They argued that he was serving a twenty‑four year sentence over 3,400 km from his home region, and that his parents had difficulties travelling long distances in view of their advanced age. It was likely that over time they would be unable to travel and would have no opportunity to visit their son. 35.  In May 2006 the FSIN refused the second applicant’s request on the grounds that there were no strict-regime penal facilities in the Chechen Republic and no exceptional circumstances preventing him serving his sentence in the Omsk Region. Reference was made to Article 73 § 2 and Article 81 of the Code of Execution of Criminal Sentences (“the CES”). 36.  On 18 July 2006 the applicants and their families complained to the Supreme Court of Russia that the applicants were being detained in penal facilities far from their home region and asked it to facilitate contact. The complaint reached the court on 28 July 2006. The case file contains no further information as to the outcome of this request. 37.  On 4 December 2006 the second applicant asked the Prosecutor General of Russia to transfer him to a penal facility in the Chechen Republic or a nearby region. He pointed to difficulties in terms of family visits and contact. 38.  On 15 March 2007 the FSIN again rejected the second applicant’s request. 39.  On 30 July 2009 the FSIN rejected the first applicant’s request to be transferred to a penal facility in the Chechen Republic, with reference to Article 73 § 4 and Article 81 § 2 of the CES. 40.  Subsequently, on an unspecified date the second applicant was transferred from the correctional colony in the Omsk Region to a correctional colony in the Murmansk Region, located over 3,700 km from the Chechen Republic.