c courts did not make any reference to inappropriate or unlawful behaviour by the applicants during that period. The Court is therefore not convinced that the domestic authorities' findings that the applicants were likely to pervert the course of justice had a sufficient basis in fact.
67. The Court further emphasises that when deciding whether a person should be released or detained the authorities have an obligation under Article 5 § 3 to consider alternative measures of ensuring his or her appearance at the trial (see Sulaoja v. Estonia, No. 55939/00, § 64, 15 February 2005, and {Jablonski} v. Poland, No. 33492/96, § 83, 21 December 2000). During the entire period under consideration the authorities did not consider the possibility of ensuring the applicants' attendance by the use of other "preventive measures" - such as a written undertaking or bail - which are expressly provided for by Russian law to secure the proper conduct of criminal proceedings, or, at the very least, seek to explain in their decisions why such alternatives would not have ensured that the trial would follow its proper course.
68. In sum, the Court finds that the domestic authorities' decisions were not based on an analysis of all the relevant facts. They took no notice of the arguments in favour of the applicants' release pending trial, such as their family situation and their behaviour during the two years since the criminal proceedings had been initiated. It is of particular concern to the Court that the Russian courts persistently used a stereotyped summary formula to justify extension of detention for the applicants. In addition, the District Court, while issuing separate detention orders in respect of the two applicants, used identical or similar wording to extend their detention. The Court has already found that the practice of issuing collective detention orders without a case-by-case assessment of the grounds for detention in respect of each detainee is incompatible, in itself, with Article 5 § 3 of the Convention (see Korchuganova, cited above, § 76; and Dolgova v. Russia, No. 11886/05, § 49, 2 March 2006). The Court considers that this conclusion is not altered in the present case. While extending the applicants' detention by means of identically or similarly worded detention orders the domestic authorities had no proper regard to the applicants' individual circumstances. Furthermore, the Court finds it particularly striking that two of the five detention decisions issued by the domestic authorities in respect of the two applicants did not indicate any reason for their continued detention. These detention orders merely mentioned that the applicants should remain in detention.
69. Having regard to the above, the Court considers that by failing to refer to concrete relevant facts or consider alternative "preventive measures" and by relying essentially on the gravity of the charges or failing to indicate any ground for the extension, the authorities extended the applicants' detention on grounds which cannot be regarded as "sufficient". They thus failed to justify the applicants' continued deprivation of liberty for eight months and eight days.
70. The Court is aware of the fact that the majority of length-of-detention cases that have come before it concern longer periods of deprivation of liberty and that against that background eight months and eight days may be regarded as a relatively short period in detention. However, Article 5 § 3 of the Convention cannot be seen as authorising pre-trial detention unconditionally provided that it lasts no longer than a certain minimum period. Justification for any period of detention, no matter how short, must be convincingly demonstrated by the authorities (see Shishkov v. Bulgaria, No. 38822/97, § 66, ECHR 2003-I (extracts)). That did not happen in the present case (see, for similar reasoning, Belchev v. Bulgaria, No. 39270
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