fence is a condition sine qua non for the lawfulness of the continued detention, but after a certain lapse of time it no longer suffices. In such cases the Court must establish whether the other grounds given by the judicial authorities continue to justify the deprivation of liberty. Where such grounds are "relevant" and "sufficient", the Court must also ascertain whether the competent national authorities displayed "special diligence" in the conduct of the proceedings (see Labita, cited above, § 153).
(b) Application of the general principles to the present case
63. The Court notes that from 5 June 2003, when the Ryazan Regional Court authorised the applicants' detention on remand, to 12 February 2004, the date of their conviction, the authorities extended the applicants' detention a number of times. In their decisions they either did not provide any reasons for the extensions or they relied on the gravity of the charges as the main factor and on the applicants' potential to obstruct the course of justice.
64. As regards the authorities' reliance on the gravity of the charges as the decisive element, the Court has repeatedly held that the gravity of the charges cannot by itself serve to justify long periods of detention (see Panchenko v. Russia, No. 45100/98, § 102, 8 February 2005; Goral v. Poland, No. 38654/97, § 68, 30 October 2003; and Ilijkov, cited above, § 81). This is particularly true in the Russian legal system, where the characterisation in law of the facts - and thus the sentence faced by the applicants - is determined by the prosecution without judicial review of whether the evidence obtained supports a reasonable suspicion that the applicants have committed the alleged offence (see Khudoyorov, cited above, § 180).
65. The remaining ground for the applicants' continued detention was the authorities' findings that the applicants might influence witnesses and thus obstruct the course of justice. The Court reiterates that it is incumbent on the domestic authorities to establish the existence of concrete facts relevant to the grounds for continued detention. Shifting the burden of proof to the detained person in such matters is tantamount to overturning the rule of Article 5 of the Convention, a provision which makes detention an exceptional departure from the right to liberty and one that is only permissible in exhaustively enumerated and strictly defined cases (see Rokhlina v. Russia, No. 54071/00, § 67, 7 April 2005). It remains to be ascertained whether the domestic authorities established and convincingly demonstrated the existence of concrete facts in support of their conclusions.
66. The Court notes that at the initial stages of the investigation the risk that an accused person might pervert the course of justice could justify keeping him or her in custody. However, after the evidence has been collected, that ground becomes less strong (see Mamedova v. Russia, No. 7064/05, § 79, 1 June 2006). Turning to the facts of the present case, the Court observes that it was not until 25 July 2003 that the District Court for the first time made reference to the risk of interference with the witnesses. Apart from a bald reference to the applicants' being likely to influence witnesses, the District Court did not mention any specific facts warranting their detention on that ground. In its subsequent detention orders the District Court merely repeated the same conclusion of the collusion risk without citing any reasons why, notwithstanding the arguments put forward by the applicants in support of their requests for release, it considered the risk of interference with the witnesses to exist and to be decisive. Furthermore, the Court has not lost sight of the fact that throughout the entire period of the pre-trial investigation and the trial proceedings leading to their conviction on 9 April 2003 the applicants were not in custody. The domesti
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