ction. During that period the charges against the first applicant were examined twice at two levels of jurisdiction.
2. Reasonableness of the length of proceedings
54. The Government claimed that the overall length of the proceedings had been reasonable. It was accounted for by the complexity of the investigative measures, the large number of defendants, and the length of the period during which the defendants had studied the case file. The delays had been caused mainly by the first applicant himself, who had defaulted on several occasions.
55. The first applicant pointed out that the delay attributable to his conduct had been negligible: following his absence at the hearing on 11 February 2002, he had been arrested just two months later, on 25 April 2002. On the other hand, the aggregate delay of approximately seven months resulted from the decisions to return the case for additional investigation and was attributable to the authorities. The almost one-year period of inactivity before the appeal hearing on 31 October 2001 was also due to the conduct of the Russian judicial authorities. Finally, the first applicant emphasised that he had been held in custody for six years and four months and that this called for particular expedition in the proceedings.
56. The Court accepts that the case at issue was one of a certain complexity since it involved a series of criminal offences allegedly committed by several co-defendants. Nevertheless, in the Court's view, the complexity of the case, taken on its own, cannot justify the overall length of the proceedings.
57. With regard to the first applicant's conduct, the Court notes that his failure to appear at the hearing of 11 February 2002 led to a delay of approximately two and a half months, until he was apprehended in April 2002. It does not appear that the first applicant caused any other appreciable delays in the proceedings.
58. As to the conduct of the domestic authorities, it is observed that the case was twice returned to the investigator because of procedural and substantive lacunae in the initial investigation. As a result, more than five years had elapsed before the first conviction was pronounced, and two and a half of those years fall within the Court's jurisdiction ratione temporis. Following that conviction, it took the Supreme Court almost one year to fix the date for the appeal hearing. Furthermore, after the first applicant had been apprehended in April 2002 and although the case against him had already been severed in February 2002, the Regional Court began the trial only in August 2002, that is approximately four months later.
59. Lastly, the Court observes that more than three years of the first applicant's detention extended into the post-ratification period, and that that fact required particular diligence on the part of the domestic courts to ensure that justice be administered expeditiously (see Kalashnikov v. Russia, No. 47095/99, § 132, ECHR 2002-VI).
60. In the light of the criteria laid down in its case-law and having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the Court considers that in the instant case the length of the criminal proceedings against the first applicant leading up to his conviction of aggravated murder was excessive and failed to meet the "reasonable time" requirement. There has accordingly been a breach of Article 6 § 1 on that account.
IV. Alleged violation of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (c)
of the Convention in the criminal proceedings against
the first applicant alone
61. The first applicant complained under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (c) about a violation of his right to a fair trial, in the proceedings leading up to his conviction of aggravated murder, because his counsel had not been afforded an opportunity to take part in the appellate proceedings before the Supre
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