le with the "reasonable time" requirement. The applicant was arrested on the basis of a reasonable suspicion. Furthermore, he had been charged with several serious crimes and, if released, could have put pressure on other defendants and witnesses, abscond or otherwise interfere with the administration of justice. Those grounds for the applicant's detention had persisted throughout the whole period he had been in custody.
42. The applicant maintained his complaint.
A. Admissibility
43. 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
44. The Court reiterates that, in determining the length of detention pending trial under Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, the period to be taken into consideration begins on the day the accused is taken into custody and ends on the day when the charge is determined, even if only by a court of first instance (see, among other authorities, Wemhoff v. Germany, 27 June 1968, § 9, Series A No. 7, and Labita v. Italy [GC], No. 26772/95, §§ 145 and 147, ECHR 2000-IV). In view of the essential link between Article 5 § 3 of the Convention and paragraph 1 (c) of that Article, a person convicted at first instance cannot be regarded as being detained "for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence", but is in the position provided for by Article 5 § 1 (a), which authorises deprivation of liberty "after conviction by a competent court" (see Panchenko v. Russia, No. 45100/98, §§ 91 and 93, 8 February 2005, with further references). Accordingly, the applicant's detention from 22 April 2004, the date of his original first-instance conviction, to 22 June 2005, the date on which that conviction was quashed by way of supervisory review and his case remitted for a new trial, cannot be taken into account for the purposes of Article 5 § 3. Accordingly, the period to be taken into consideration comprised two terms, the first lasting from 2 January 2002 to 22 April 2004 and the second from 22 June 2005 to 21 August 2006, and amounted in total to over three years and five and a half months (see, among other authorities, Solmaz v. Turkey, No. 27561/02, §§ 34 - 37, 16 January 2007).
45. As regards the reasons underlying the applicant's detention, the Court observes that the domestic authorities consistently relied on the gravity of the charges against him as the sole factor justifying his remand in custody. In this connection the Court reiterates that, although the severity of the sentence faced is a relevant element in the assessment of the risk of absconding or re-offending, the need to continue the deprivation of liberty cannot be assessed from a purely abstract point of view, taking into consideration only the gravity of the offence. Nor can continuation of the detention be used to anticipate a custodial sentence (see Panchenko, cited above § 102; Ilijkov, cited above, § 81; and Letellier v. France, judgment of 26 June 1991, Series A No. 207, § 51). This is particularly true in the Russian legal system where the characterisation in law of the facts - and thus the sentence faced by the applicant - is determined by the prosecution without judicial review of the issue whether the evidence that has been obtained supports a reasonable suspicion that the applicant has committed the alleged offence (see Khudoyorov v. Russia, No. 6847/02, § 180, 8 November 2005). In the instant case, beyond a reference to the applicant's character and past criminal record in one decision (see paragraph 9), the domestic authorities did not mention any concrete facts corroborating the detention orders.
46. The Court further observes that during the en
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