e present case, in their original observations of 15 December 2004 the Government based their account of the conditions of the applicant's detention in the IZ-62/1 on certificates issued by the head of that remand centre on 3 November 2004 (see paragraph 75 above). On 20 June 2007, when inviting the parties to submit additional comments regarding this part of the application, the Court specifically requested that the Government to submit relevant documents pertaining to the period of the applicant's detention in the IZ-62/1. Among the documents submitted by the Government in reply, only a copy of the applicant's medical file had been issued during the relevant period. The other documents included certificates of the head of the said detention facility dated 21 August 2007, statements of several warders of the IZ-62/1 dated 17 August 2007 and the present day photographs of the cells in which, according to the Government, the applicant had been kept. Thus, the first issue to be examined is whether on the basis of the facts of the present case the Government's failure to submit copies of the relevant prison documentation has been properly accounted for.
153. The Government stated that the documents they had submitted were formal evidence issued by competent officials who were liable to criminal persecution for falsification of any information reflected in those documents. The Government did not provide any other explanation as to their failure to submit documents pertaining to the period of the applicant's detention in the IZ-62/1, however, some of the certificates dated 21 August 2007 reveal that relevant documents had been destroyed upon expiry of the five year time-limit for their storage (see paragraphs 85 and 88 above). In this latter respect, the Court reiterates that the destruction of the relevant documents due to the expiry of the time-limit for their storage, albeit regrettable, cannot in itself be regarded as an unsatisfactory explanation for the failure to submit them. The Court also has to look at the timing of that act as well as other relevant factual circumstances. In particular, regard should be had to whether the authorities appeared to have been acting with due care in this respect (see Novinskiy v. Russia, No. 11982/02, § 102, 10 February 2009).
154. Having examined the copies of materials submitted by the Government, the Court notes with regret that they reveal that the authorities did not display sufficient diligence in handling the relevant prison documentation in the Strasbourg proceedings. It is true that, if the time-limit of five years was applied for storage of prison documentation, as indicated in the certificates of 21 August 2007, the documents requested by the Court were most probably destroyed in 2005, and therefore the Government was not in a position to comply with the Court's request of 20 June 2007. However, the present application was communicated to the Government on 21 September 2004 and there is no evidence that the Government were in any way prevented from enclosing relevant documents stemming from the relevant period to their original observations of 15 December 2004, rather than producing certificates of 3 November 2004. Further, once they were on notice that the Court was dealing with the case, it would have been open to the Government not to destroy the documents, in case they were of relevance to the present proceedings.
155. In so far as the Government referred to the statements by the officials of the IZ-62/1 dated 17 August 2007 as having evidentiary value and acting as a substitute for the original prison documentation, the Court would reiterate that on several previous occasions it has declined to accept the validity of similar statements on the ground that they could not be viewed as sufficiently reliable given the lapse of time involved (see Igor Ivanov, cited above, § 34, Belashev v. Russia, No. 28617/03, § 52, 13 No
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