Постановление Европейского суда по правам человека от 18.06.2009 «Дело Штейн (Shteyn (Stein)) против России» [англ.]

nt

1. Admissibility

100. The Court notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention. It further notes that it is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.

2. Merits

101. The Court observes that the relevant period of the applicant's detention started on 9 December 2004, the date of his arrest, and ended on 30 July 2008, when he was convicted. Thus, he spent three years, seven months and twenty-one days in detention before and pending trial. The length of the applicant's detention is a matter of concern for the Court. The presumption being in favour of release, the Russian authorities were required to put forward very weighty reasons for keeping the applicant in detention for such a long time.
102. The applicant was apprehended on suspicion of procurement and attempted supply of drugs following a search in his flat and seizure of a quantity of drugs. The Court is satisfied that that suspicion was a reasonable one. For at least an initial period, its existence justified the applicant's detention. However, the Court reiterates that the persistence of reasonable suspicion that the person arrested has committed an offence is a condition sine qua non for the lawfulness of the continued detention, but with the lapse of time this no longer suffices. Thus, the Court must establish whether the other grounds given by the judicial authorities continued to justify the deprivation of liberty (see McKay v. the United Kingdom [GC], No. 543/03, § 44, ECHR 2006-...). Where such grounds were "relevant" and "sufficient", the Court must also be satisfied that the national authorities displayed "special diligence" in the conduct of the proceedings.
103. The question whether or not a period of detention is reasonable must be assessed in each case according to its special features; there is no fixed time-frame applicable to each case (see McKay, cited above, § 45). It is essentially on the basis of the reasons given in the domestic courts' decisions and of the well-documented facts stated by the applicant in his appeals that the Court is called upon to decide whether Article 5 § 3 has been complied with. It will therefore examine the reasons given by the Russian courts throughout the period of detention.
104. In its assessment the Court does not lose sight of the fact that after the applicant had been charged in December 2004, further charges were brought in May and October 2005 on various counts of drug trafficking (see paragraphs 7 and 9 above). However, the Court has repeatedly held that, although the gravity of the charges or the severity of the sentence faced is relevant in the assessment of the risk of an accused absconding, reoffending or obstructing justice, it cannot by itself serve to justify long periods of detention on remand (see Ilijkov v. Bulgaria, No. 33977/96, §§ 80 and 81, 26 July 2001). This is particularly true in the Russian legal system, where the characterisation in law of the facts - and thus the sentence faced by the applicant - is determined by the prosecution without judicial review of whether the evidence obtained supports a reasonable suspicion that the applicant has committed the alleged offence (see Khudoyorov, cited above, § 180).
105. The Government have put a special emphasis on the concerted or organised nature of the alleged criminal activities. Indeed, the applicant was charged with membership of a criminal gang, which is an offence under the Criminal Code, and commission of offences relating to drug trafficking within that organised group. The Court has previously considered that the existence of a general risk flowing from it may be accepted as the basis for detention at the initial stages of the proceedings (see {Kucera} v. Slovakia, No. 48666/99, § 95, ECHR 2007-... (ex



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