34 CYPRUS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT by virtue of the presence of its armed forces, directly continued to prevent investigations in the occupied area to trace those persons who were still missing and continued to refuse to account for their fate. 125. The applicant Government further stressed that the procedural obligation to protect the right to life devolving on the respondent State in application of Article 2 could not be discharged with reference to the ongoing work of the CMP (see paragraph 16 above), having regard to the limited scope of that body's mandate and to the characteristics of an “effective investigation” as defined in the Court's case-law in the context of the Convention provision at issue. 126. From the standpoint of the substantive obligation contained in Article 2, the applicant Government requested the Court to find and declare, in line with the Commission's conclusion, that the respondent State had failed to take the necessary operational measures to protect the right to life of the missing persons all of whom had disappeared in life-threatening circumstances known to, and indeed, created by, the respondent State. 127. The Commission observed that the missing persons had disappeared in circumstances which were life-threatening, having regard, inter alia, to the fact that their disappearance had occurred at a time when there was clear evidence of large-scale killings including as a result of acts of criminal behaviour outside the fighting zones. For the Commission, and with reference to the Court's case-law, the authorities of the respondent State had a positive obligation under Article 2 to conduct effective investigations into the circumstances surrounding the disappearances. Moreover, this obligation had to be seen as a continuing one in view of the consideration that the missing persons might have lost their lives as a result of crimes not subject to limitation. 128. The Commission found accordingly that Article 2 had been violated by virtue of a lack of effective investigation by the authorities of the respondent State and that that failing could not be compensated for by the respondent State's contribution to work undertaken by the CMP. 129. The Court observes that the applicant Government contend first and foremost that the missing persons must be presumed to be still alive unless there is clear evidence to the contrary (see paragraph 119 above). Although the evidence adduced before the Commission confirms a very high incidence of military and civilian deaths during the military operations of July and August 1974, the Court reiterates that it cannot speculate as to whether any of the missing persons have in fact been killed by either the Turkish forces or Turkish-Cypriot paramilitaries into whose hands they may have fallen. It is true that the head of the “TRNC”, Mr Denktaş, broadcast a statement on 1 March 1996 admitting that the Turkish army had handed over Greek-Cypriot prisoners to Turkish-Cypriot fighters under Turkish command and that these prisoners had then been killed (see paragraph 25 above). It is equally the case that, in February 1998, Professor Yalçin