vice for the Execution of Sentences confirming that the applicant had been provided with an individual sleeping place and that the sanitary, hygienic and temperature conditions had been satisfactory. According to them, the mere fact that the applicant had been detained in overcrowded cells cannot serve as a basis for finding a violation of Article 3 of the Convention.
29. The applicant challenged the Government's description of the conditions in detention facilities Nos. IZ-77/2 and IZ-77/3 and insisted that they had been unacceptable. He submitted that the cells had at all times been severely overcrowded and the cell area per detainee had been insufficient, that the toilet offered no privacy, and that the lighting had been dim.
B. The Court's assessment
1. Admissibility
30. The Court notes at the outset that the applicant was transferred from pre-trial detention facilities to a correctional colony on 9 September 2003. In his letter of 21 October 2003, which set out a summary of the relevant facts, the applicant explicitly informed the Court that he wished to complain, inter alia, of a violation of Article 3 of the Convention with respect to the conditions of his pre-trial detention. The Court received this letter on 4 November 2003. The Court reiterates that an application is lodged on the date of the applicant's first letter, provided the applicant has sufficiently indicated the purpose of the application (see Papageorgiou v. Greece, judgment of 22 October 1997, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-VI, § 32). Therefore, the Government's argument should be dismissed.
31. The Court also notes, as far as exhaustion of domestic remedies is concerned, that it is true that the applicant did not lodge complaints with the courts or prosecutor's offices about his detention conditions. However the Government did not demonstrate what redress could have been afforded to the applicant by such a measure, taking into account that the problems arising from the conditions of his detention were apparently of a structural nature and did not only concern his personal situation (see Kalashnikov v. Russia (dec.), No. 47095/99, 18 September 2001, Mamedova v. Russia, No. 7064/05, § 57, 1 June 2006; and Benediktov, cited above, §§ 29 - 30). The Court therefore finds that this complaint cannot be rejected for failure to exhaust domestic remedies.
32. The Court further finds that this complaint is neither manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention nor inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.
2. Merits
33. An outline of the Court's case-law under Article 3 of the Convention on account of the conditions of detention can be found in a number of judgments concerning Russia (see, in particular, Kalashnikov v. Russia, No. 47095/99, §§ 95 et seq., ECHR 2002-VI, and Mayzit v. Russia No. 63378/00, §§ 34 et seq., 20 January 2005).
34. The Court notes at the outset that the continuous nature of the applicant's detention in facilities Nos. IZ-77/2 and IZ-77/3 and his identical descriptions of the conditions of the detention warrant the examination of the applicant's detention from 5 June 2000 to 9 September 2003 without dividing it into separate periods (see, for similar reasoning, Benediktov, cited above, § 31).
35. The Court observes that the parties disagreed as to the specific conditions of the applicant's detention. There is also a divergence in their submissions with respect to periods of time during which the applicant was detained in particular cells. However, there is no need for the Court to establish the truth of each and every allegation, since it considers that those facts that are not in dispute give it sufficient grounds to make substantive conclusions on whether the conditions o
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