rmation. They should have analysed other pertinent factors, such as the advancement of the investigation or judicial proceedings, the applicant's personality, his behaviour before and after the arrest, and any other specific indications justifying the fear that he might abuse his regained liberty by carrying out acts aimed at falsification or destruction of evidence or manipulation of witnesses (see W. v. Switzerland, cited above, § 36).
78. In this respect, the Court observes that at no point in the proceedings did the domestic courts provide a basis for their conclusion of the risk of collusion, for instance by indicating a particular occasion on which the applicant had attempted to influence witnesses. Apart from a bald reference to the applicant's and his relatives' attempts to persuade co-defendants and certain unidentified witnesses to make "beneficial statements", the domestic courts did not mention any specific matters warranting the applicant's detention on that ground.
79. However, more fundamentally, the Court finds it striking that relying on certain information, the domestic court did not provide the applicant with an opportunity to challenge it, for example, by having the sources of that information examined (see, for comparison, Becciev v. Moldova, No. 9190/03, §§ 73 - 76, 4 October 2005), or at least by serving him with copies of the co-defendants' or witnesses' complaints or statements alleging witness tampering, if such statements and complaints had been lodged with the prosecution authorities. It appears, and the Government did not argue otherwise, that the applicant was not even notified of the origin and nature of the submissions lodged by the investigating authorities to corroborate their assertion of witness manipulation. Moreover, the Court finds it peculiar that being informed of the instances of the witness manipulation, the prosecution authorities did not institute criminal proceedings or at least open a preliminary inquiry into those allegations. The Court observes, and the parties did not dispute that fact, that the domestic authorities did not take any actions against either the applicant, his relatives or confidents, that they were never subject to any form of investigation and were not even questioned about the alleged attempts to manipulate witnesses. The Court is therefore not convinced that the domestic authorities' findings of the applicant's liability to pervert the course of justice had sufficient basis in fact (see, for similar reasoning, Aleksandr Makarov, cited above, § 132).
80. Furthermore, the Court notes that the pre-trial investigation in respect of the applicant was completed at the end of December 2007 (see paragraph 18 above). He remained in custody for an additional twenty months, during which the proceedings were pending before the trial court. It thus appears that the domestic authorities had sufficient time to take statements from witnesses in a manner which could have excluded any doubt as to their veracity and would have eliminated the necessity to continue the applicant's deprivation of liberty on that ground (see, for similar reasoning, Solovyev v. Russia, No. 2708/02, § 115, 24 May 2007). The Court therefore finds that, having failed to act diligently, the national authorities were not entitled to regard the circumstances of the case as justification for using the risk of collusion as a further ground for the applicant's detention. In addition, the Court considers it particularly preposterous that after all the prosecution witnesses had been heard in open court, the domestic courts still continued citing the risk of collusion as the ground for the applicant's detention, having envisaged an abstract possibility of the judicial inquiry being supplemented (see paragraph 39 above).
(iii) The risk of reoffending and the preservation of public order
81. In a number of the
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