d his appeals within seven to ten days from the date of the respective detention orders (see paragraphs 40, 44, 48, 54 and 58), and this, in its view, did not protract the proceedings at all.
167. Furthermore, the Court is prepared to accept that the domestic authorities required some time to allow the other defendants in the criminal case to submit their comments, to dispatch a large bulk of detention materials from Vladimir to Moscow and to settle other formalities in preparation for the detention hearings. However, in the absence of any concrete and specific evidence justifying the delays point by point, the Court is not persuaded that such obligations should have required periods of up to three months, as they did in the present case. The Court considers that such delays cannot be considered compatible with the "speediness" requirement of Article 5 § 4 (see Lebedev, cited above, §§ 102 and 108; Mamedova, cited above, § 96; and Khudoyorov, cited above, §§ 198 and 204). The Court also deplores the fact that on two occasions (see paragraphs 45 - 46 and 49 - 50) the appeals against the above detention orders were examined only after a fresh detention order had been issued by the Regional Court. It appears that it was open to the applicant to lodge applications for release during the intervening periods of time (see Khudobin v. Russia, No. 59696/00, § 117, ECHR 2006-... (extracts)). However, the availability of such recourse did not absolve the national authorities from their obligation to decide "speedily" on the validity of an extension order (see Starokadomskiy v. Russia, No. 42239/02, § 85, 31 July 2008, with further references).
168. There has therefore been a violation of Article 5 § 4 of the Convention.
V. Alleged violation of Article 6 of the Convention
169. Lastly, the applicant complained that the length of the criminal proceedings against him had exceeded the "reasonable time" requirement of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. The relevant part of that provision reads as follows:
"In the determination of... any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a... hearing within a reasonable time by [a]... tribunal..."
A. Admissibility
170. The Court notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention. It further notes that it is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.
B. Merits
1. Submissions by the parties
171. The Government submitted that the criminal case was particularly complex, in view of the number of co-accused and of the criminal acts concerned. Each of the co-accused in the case was prosecuted in relation to three to six crimes, including organised robbery, armed assaults and arms trafficking. The charges concerned criminal activities in various regions. The investigation was rendered difficult by the fact that there were some forty witnesses and five victims in the case, all of them residing quite far from the Vladimir Regional Court. The case was returned to the prosecutor on two occasions. One of the co-accused, D.G. K., was seriously ill and it was impossible to proceed with examination of the case in his absence. In addition, delays had been caused by the need to secure the attendance of Russian to Azeri translators, the occasional illnesses of five different lawyers representing the co-accused (fifty-three days in total), the occasional illnesses of three of the co-accused, including the applicant, and the acts of co-accused G., who had deliberately protracted the proceedings by slashing his wrists and whose mental health thus had to be examined.
172. The applicant disagreed with the Government and argued that his case was relatively straightforward and was not too voluminous. Had the preparation been better, the dom
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