detention in remand prison No. IZ-77/3 in Moscow had been in compliance with Article 3 of the Convention. At all times the applicant had been afforded at least 4 sq. m of personal space. According to the Government, it was not possible to provide any further detail, such as the number of persons detained in each cell together with the applicant and/or the number of sleeping places there, because all the official records had been destroyed after the expiry of the statutory period for their storage and the renovation of the remand prison carried out in 2005 - 2006.
35. The applicant maintained his complaint. He reiterated that he had been detained in severely overcrowded cells where he was afforded no more than 0.83 - 1.4 sq. m of personal space. He further referred to the case of Belevitskiy (see Belevitskiy v. Russia, No. 72967/01, 1 March 2007) where the Court had found a violation of the applicant's rights set out in Article 3 of the Convention on account of severe overcrowding of the cells in the same remand prison.
2. The Court's assessment
36. The Court reiterates that Article 3 enshrines one of the fundamental values of democratic society. The Convention prohibits in absolute terms torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, irrespective of the circumstances or the victim's behaviour (see, among other authorities, Labita v. Italy [GC], No. 26772/95, § 119, ECHR 2000-IV). The Court has consistently stressed that the suffering and humiliation involved must in any event go beyond the inevitable element of suffering or humiliation connected with a given form of legitimate treatment or punishment. Although measures depriving a person of liberty may often involve such an element, in accordance with Article 3 of the Convention the State must ensure that a person is detained under conditions which are compatible with respect for his human dignity and that the manner and method of the execution of the measure do not subject him to distress or hardship exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention (see {Kudla}, cited above, §§ 92 - 94).
37. Turning to the facts of the instant case, the Court notes that the parties disagreed as to most aspects of the conditions of the applicant's detention. However, there is no need for the Court to establish the veracity of each and every allegation, because it can find a violation of Article 3 on the basis of the facts presented to it by the applicant, which the respondent Government failed to refute (see Grigoryevskikh v. Russia, No. 22/03, § 55, 9 April 2009).
38. In particular, the Court observes that the Government was unable to provide any information as to the number of inmates detained together with the applicant and/or the number of sleeping places in the cells where he had been detained, since the remand prison records pertaining to the period of the applicant's detention there had been destroyed after the expiry of the time-limit for their storage. Nevertheless, the Government refuted the applicant's allegations, stating that at all times the applicant had been afforded at least 4 sq. m of personal space. Their assertion was based on the certificates issued by the remand prison administration in 2008.
39. In this connection, the Court notes that on several previous occasions when the Government have failed to submit original records, it has held that documents prepared after a considerable period of time cannot be viewed as sufficiently reliable given the time that has passed (see, among recent authorities, Novinskiy v. Russia, No. 11982/02, § 105, 10 February 2009). The Court opines that these considerations hold true in the present case. The certificates prepared by the Russian authorities almost five years after the events in question cannot qualify as sufficiently reliable sources of data.
40. The Court further reiterates that i
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