above, § 104).
127. Turning to the circumstances of the present case, the Court observes that the applicant was taken into custody for the first time on 18 December 1998 and was released on a written undertaking on 14 March 2000. This period of the applicant's detention, having been interrupted by the applicant's release and having ended more than six months before the introduction of the applicant's complaint on 3 February 2004, should not be taken into account. The applicant was subsequently detained on 14 May 2001 after his conviction by the Rostov Regional Court. He remained detained after the quashing of the conviction by the Supreme Court of Russia on 16 January 2002. It follows that the period from 14 May 2001 to 16 January 2002 was justified under Article 5 § 1 (a) of the Convention and should, therefore, also be excluded from the Court's consideration. Accordingly, the period to be taken into consideration in the present case started to run from 16 January 2002 and ended on 17 May 2004 when the applicant was again convicted. It therefore amounted to two years and four months.
128. The Court notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention and is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.
2. Merits
129. The Court reiterates that the persistence of reasonable suspicion that the person arrested has committed an offence is a condition sine qua non for the lawfulness of the continued detention. However after a certain lapse of time it no longer suffices. In such cases, the Court must establish whether the other grounds given by the judicial authorities continued to justify the deprivation of liberty. Where such grounds were "relevant" and "sufficient", the Court must also ascertain whether the competent national authorities displayed "special diligence" in the conduct of the proceedings (see Labita, cited above, §§ 152 and 153).
130. The presumption is in favour of release. As the Court has consistently held, the second limb of Article 5 § 3 does not give judicial authorities a choice between either bringing an accused to trial within a reasonable time or granting him provisional release pending trial. Until his conviction, the accused must be presumed innocent, and the purpose of the provision under consideration is essentially to require his provisional release once his continued detention ceases to be reasonable (see, among other authorities, Castravet v. Moldova, No. 23393/05, § 30, 13 March 2007; McKay v. the United Kingdom [GC], No. 543/03, § 41, ECHR 2006-...; Jablonski v. Poland, No. 33492/96, § 83, 21 December 2000; and Neumeister v. Austria, 27 June 1968, § 4, Series A No. 8).
131. Turning to the circumstances of the present case, the Court accepts that the applicant's detention may initially have been warranted by a reasonable suspicion of his involvement in the commission of several criminal offences. However, after a certain lapse of time the persistence of a reasonable suspicion by itself no longer sufficed. Accordingly, the domestic authorities were under an obligation to analyse the applicant's personal situation in greater detail and to give specific reasons for holding him in custody.
132. The Court observes that in the period from January to July 2002 the domestic court kept the applicant in detention without citing any particular reason (see paragraphs 10 and 11 above). Subsequently, in the period from July 2002 to May 2004 the court extended the applicant's detention on eight occasions. The only ground invoked for continuing his detention was the fact that he was charged with "serious" and "particularly serious" criminal offences (see, in particular, paragraphs 12, 14 and 16 above).
133. The Court has repeatedly held that although the severity of the sentence faced is
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