8 CYPRUS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT custody. In their principal submission, the issues raised by the applicant Government should continue to be pursued within the framework of the United Nations Committee on Missing Persons (see paragraph 16 above) rather than under the Convention. 22. The Commission proceeded on the understanding that its task was not to establish what actually happened to the Greek-Cypriot persons who went missing following the Turkish military operations conducted in northern Cyprus in July and August 1974. Rather, it saw its task as one of determining whether or not the alleged failure of the respondent State to clarify the facts surrounding the disappearances constituted a continuing violation of the Convention. 23. To that end, the Commission had particular regard to its earlier findings in its 1976 and 1983 reports. It recalled that in its 1976 report it had stated that it was widely accepted that a considerable number of Cypriots were still missing as a result of armed conflict in Cyprus and that a number of persons declared to be missing were identified as Greek Cypriots taken prisoner by the Turkish army. This finding, in the Commission's opinion at the time, created a presumption of Turkish responsibility for the fate of persons shown to be in Turkish custody. While noting that killings of Greek-Cypriot civilians had occurred on a large scale, the Commission also considered at the time of its 1976 report that it was unable to ascertain whether, and under what circumstances, Greek-Cypriot prisoners declared to be missing had been deprived of their life. 24. In the present case, the Commission further recalled that in its 1983 report it found it established that there were sufficient indications in an indefinite number of cases that missing Greek Cypriots had been in Turkish custody in 1974 and that this finding once again created a presumption of Turkish responsibility for the fate of these persons. 25. The Commission found that the evidence submitted to it in the instant case confirmed its earlier findings that certain of the missing persons were last seen in Turkish or Turkish-Cypriot custody. In this connection, the Commission had regard to the following: a statement of Mr Denktaş, “President of the TRNC”, broadcast on 1 March 1996, in which he admitted that forty-two Greek-Cypriot prisoners were handed over to TurkishCypriot fighters who killed them and that in order to prevent further such killings prisoners were subsequently transferred to Turkey; the broadcast statement of Professor Yalçin Küçük, a former Turkish officer who had served in the Turkish army at the time and participated in the 1974 military operation in Cyprus, in which he suggested that the Turkish army had engaged in widespread killings of, inter alia, civilians in so-called cleaningup operations; the Dillon Report submitted to the United States Congress in May 1998 indicating, inter alia, that Turkish and Turkish-Cypriot soldiers rounded up Greek-Cypriot civilians in the village of Asha on 18 August 1974 and took away males over the age of 15, most of whom were