2 of the Detention of Suspects Act (Federal Law No. 103-FZ of 15 July 1995) provides that detainees should be given free food sufficient to maintain them in good health according to standards established by the Government of the Russian Federation. Section 23 provides that detainees should be kept in conditions which satisfy sanitary and hygienic requirements. They should be provided with an individual sleeping place and given bedding, tableware and toiletries. Each inmate should have no less than four square metres of personal space in his or her cell.
THE LAW
I. Alleged violation of Article 3 of the Convention
48. The applicant complained that the conditions of her detention in detention facility No. IZ-50/3 in Serpukhov had been in breach of Article 3 of the Convention, which provides:
"No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
A. Admissibility
49. The Government argued that the applicant had not exhausted the domestic remedies available to her. In particular, she had not sought compensation for non-pecuniary damage before a court. To prove the effectiveness of that remedy, they referred to an article in a Russian newspaper, reporting on the case of Mr D., who had contracted scabies while in detention and had been awarded RUB 25,000 by the Novgorod Town Court in respect of non-pecuniary damage. They further referred to the judgment of the Zheleznodorozhniy District Court of Orel of 2 June 2004, awarding Mr R. RUB 30,000 as compensation for unlawful detention lasting fifty-six days, for four of which he had been without food. Mr S. had been awarded RUB 3,000 for the inadequate conditions of his detention by the judgment of the Supreme Court of the Mariy-El Republic of 14 March 2006. It had been also open for the applicant to complain to a prosecutor, such complaint being, in the Government's opinion, an effective remedy. They referred to improvements in the conditions of detention which had been made in response to complaints lodged with the prosecutor's office by Mr N., Mr D. and Mr Sh. (a medical unit had been created, medicines purchased and maintenance works carried out). They stated that 13% of complaints about the allegedly inadequate conditions of detention had been considered well-founded in 2007, while in the first half of 2006 the prosecutors had recognised 18% of such complaints as well-founded.
50. The Government further submitted that the Court had competence to examine the conditions of the applicant's detention only during the six months preceding the submission of her application form. They argued that the applicant's detention had not been a continuing situation, as she had been repeatedly transferred from one cell to another and the conditions of her detention had varied in different cells. Moreover, if detainees were allowed to complain about long periods of detention, this would impose a disproportionate burden on the authorities to store detention facility registers indefinitely. Accordingly, the Government invited the Court to reject the applicant's complaints relating to the period prior to 24 June 2007 for non-compliance with the six-month rule.
51. The applicant submitted that she had raised a complaint of poor conditions of detention at court hearings. She consistently mentioned inhuman conditions in her appeal submissions. However, the courts ignored her complaints. She further argued that her detention had been a continuous situation. During the majority of her detention she had been held in overcrowded conditions in cell No. 32, except for several days in September 2007 when she had been temporarily transferred to cell No. 52.
52. The Court observes that in the cases of Mamedova v. Russia (No. 7064/05, § 57, 1 June 2006) and Benediktov v. Russia (No. 106/02, §§ 29 - 30, 10 May 2007)
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