urposes of the six-month rule, the Court must ascertain from what date the six-month period should be calculated in the present case.
29. Normally, the six-month period runs from the final decision in the process of exhaustion of domestic remedies. However, in the absence of domestic remedies the six-month period runs from the date of the acts or measures complained of. Special considerations could apply in exceptional cases, where an applicant first avails himself of a remedy and only at a later stage becomes aware, or should have become aware, of circumstances which render the remedy ineffective. In such a case the Court considers that it may be appropriate for the purposes of Article 35 § 1 to take the start of the six-month period from the date when the applicant first became or ought to have become aware of those circumstances (see, among other authorities, {Lacin} v. Turkey, No. 23654/94, Commission decision of 15 May 1995).
30. Accordingly, the Court's task in the present case is twofold. Firstly, the Court has to decide whether the applicant's action for damages could be considered an effective remedy in respect of the alleged violation of his rights. Then, if the Court finds that that action fell short of providing the applicant with adequate and sufficient redress, it has to see whether the latter could still be considered to have complied with the six-month rule.
31. The Court observes that it has previously found on numerous occasions that an application to a court with a view of obtaining redress for allegedly inhuman and degrading conditions of detention cannot be regarded as an effective domestic remedy (see, for example, Aleksandr Makarov v. Russia, No. 15217/07, §§ 76 - 91, 12 March 2009). Having regard to the materials submitted by the Government, the Court notes that they have not put forward any fact or argument capable of persuading it to reach a different conclusion in the present case. Even though the domestic courts accepted and considered the applicant's claims at two levels of jurisdiction, this fact alone is not sufficient to consider the judicial avenue pursued by the applicant to be an effective remedy. While recognising the truthfulness of the applicant's allegations concerning the overcrowding of the cells where he had been detained, the courts nevertheless dismissed his claims for damages, finding no unlawfulness in the authorities' failure to comply with applicable domestic standards concerning conditions of detention.
32. The Court finds that the way the domestic courts interpreted and applied the relevant provisions of the Russian Civil Code deprived the applicant's action for damages lodged against State authorities of any prospect of success. Therefore, it could not be considered an effective remedy in respect of the alleged violation. In such circumstances, it remains for the Court to ascertain from what moment the applicant became aware, or should reasonably have become aware, of this situation, in order to decide whether he complied with the six-month rule.
33. Turning to the facts of the present case, the Court discerns nothing in the parties' submissions to suggest that during the four years after the applicant's pre-trial detention ended in December 1998, he was aware, or should have become aware, of the futility of his action for damages arising from the conditions of his detention. During the whole of that period the applicant remained incarcerated, serving a prison sentence without readily available access to legal advice. The Court considers it reasonable that the applicant, even though he did not do so promptly, tried first to obtain redress in respect of the violation of his rights at the domestic level and only after his action was dismissed in the final instance by the Kaliningrad Regional Court on 24 September 2003 did he bring the complaint to the Court's attention, on 15 November
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