esolve the parties' disagreement on all of the aforementioned aspects as the case file contains sufficient documentary evidence to confirm the applicants' allegations of severe overcrowding in pre-trial detention centre IZ-69/1, which is in itself sufficient to conclude that Article 3 of the Convention has been breached.
87. Firstly, the Court would point out a very obvious discrepancy between the information submitted by the prison authority and the Government's position expressed in their observations on the merits of the case denying any overcrowding in that prison. In fact, the prison authority certified that the applicants' cells had not been overcrowded on certain specific days, but there is nothing in the statements by the prison authority to confirm the lack of overcrowding in respect of each day of the applicants' detention in facility No. IZ-69/1. Thus, the Government's reference to the certificates submitted by the prison administration, whilst informative, is not entirely conclusive.
88. Secondly, and most importantly, the Court notes that from the general information on the functioning of facility No. IZ-69/1 at the relevant time (see paragraph 53) it cannot avoid the impression that the pre-trial detention centre was severely overcrowded. If the data submitted by the prison authority is correct and at the time the centre did indeed have a total of 536 sleeping places in 127 cells for an average daily number of detainees of around 2,300, then the only conclusion to be drawn from this information is that the centre contained well over four times more inmates than the number it was designed for. In such circumstances, the applicants, who spent around seven months there and frequently changed cells, could not have remained unaffected by the problem. In the light of this finding, the Court - even proceeding on the assumption that the information on the dimensions and capacity of the cells in question submitted by the Government was correct - cannot but accept the applicants' allegations concerning the severe overcrowding of the cells as, depending on the exact dimensions of the cell in question, the detainees would have had around one square metre of space per person.
89. The Court has frequently found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on account of lack of personal space afforded to detainees (see Khudoyorov v. Russia, No. 6847/02, §§ 104 et seq., ECHR 2005-X (extracts); Labzov v. Russia, No. 62208/00, §§ 44 et seq., 16 June 2005; Novoselov v. Russia, No. 66460/01, §§ 41 et seq., 2 June 2005; Mayzit v. Russia, No. 63378/00, §§ 39 et seq., 20 January 2005; Kalashnikov v. Russia, No. 47095/99, §§ 97 et seq., ECHR 2002-VI; and Peers v. Greece, No. 28524/95, §§ 69 et seq., ECHR 2001-III).
90. Having regard to its case-law on the subject and the material submitted by the parties, the Court notes that the Government have not put forward any fact or argument capable of persuading it to reach a different conclusion in the present case. Although in the present case there is no indication that there was a positive intention to humiliate or debase the applicants, the Court finds that the fact that the applicants were obliged to live, sleep and use the toilet in the same cell as so many other inmates for over seven months was itself sufficient to cause distress or hardship of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention, and to arouse in them feelings of fear, anguish and inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing them.
91. There has therefore been a violation of Article 3 of the Convention because the applicants were subjected to inhuman treatment on account of the conditions of their detention from 16 December 2000 to 24 and 31 July 2001 (for the first and second applicant respectively) in facility No. IZ-69/1.
3. The conditions of transportation
92. The
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