85. Although it is in the first place for the national authorities, notably the courts, to interpret and apply domestic law, under Article 5 § 1 failure to comply with domestic law entails a breach of the Convention and the Court can and should therefore review whether this law has been complied with (see Benham v. the United Kingdom, 10 June 1996, § 41, Reports 1996-III; {Jecius} v. Lithuania, No. 34578/97, § 68, ECHR 2000 IX; and Ladent v. Poland, No. 11036/03, § 47, ECHR 2008-... (extracts)).
186. Turning to the circumstances of the present case, the Court takes note at the outset of the Government's claim that the applicant had failed to comply with the six-month requirement in respect of his submissions under Article 5 § 1. Referring to its findings to the effect that the applicant had no effective remedies to exhaust (see, in particular, paragraphs 174 - 177 above), the Court observes that the detention orders of 7 August and 16 September 2008 were, indeed, issued more than six months prior to the applicant's application to the Court, that is 15 May 2009. At the same time it notes that the gist of his submissions under Article 5 § 1 is not the initial decisions to place him in custody but the alleged unlawfulness of his ensuing continued detention (see paragraph 154 above). Hence, the issue before the Court is not whether those initial detention orders were lawful, but whether the applicant's detention as of 13 November 2008 and onwards was "lawful" within the meaning of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention, that is whether it had legal basis in the domestic law and "was carried out in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law" (see Mooren, cited above, §§ 76 and 82, and Eminbeyli v. Russia, No. 42443/02, §§ 43 and 46, 26 February 2009).
187. Accordingly, the Court dismisses the Government's objection concerning the applicant's alleged failure to comply with the six-month requirement in respect of his complaints under Article 5 § 1.
188. It will next examine whether the requirements of Article 5 § 1 were complied with in the present case.
189. The Court observes that the applicant's complaint is threefold. He submitted, in particular, not only that his detention was unlawful under the domestic law, but that the quality of the law itself did not satisfy the Convention requirements to protect him against arbitrariness. He also claimed that the authorities had failed to display due diligence in conducting the extradition proceedings.
190. As regards the applicant's argument concerning the "quality of the law" in the provisions governing detention of persons pending extradition, the Court cannot but observe that in a series of judgments it has held that those provisions were neither precise nor foreseeable in their application and fell short of the "quality of law" standard required under the Convention (see, among other authorities, Nasrulloyev, cited above, §§ 76 - 78; Ismoilov and Others, cited above, §§ 138 - 140; Ryabikin, cited above, §§ 128 - 130; Muminov, cited above, §§ 121 - 123, and Khudyakova v. Russia, No. 13476/04, §§ 68 - 74, 8 January 2009).
191. It is a matter of concern for the Court that, as transpires from the correspondence between the Ombudsman and the Prosecutor General's Office, the domestic authorities involved in the control and supervision of the detention pending extradition, and, in particular, the national courts, appear to remain in a state of uncertainty as regards the application of the relevant legislation (see paragraphs 68 - 70 above). The Court also doubts that the Supreme Court's latest Directive Decision of 29 October 2009 clarified the situation in respect of persons who are in the applicant's position since, in the submission of the Deputy Prosecutor General, it concerned only persons in respect of whom the extradition check was pending, which was not the applicant's case
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