The Registrar
European Court of Human Rights
Council of Europe
F-67075 Strasbourg CEDEX
FRANCE
Reference: Mr. Alexei Datskevich

Additional submission PASKO v. Russia
Application no. 69519/01

1. Introduction
As stated in our letter of 25th February 2003, the Court may use the application form submitted by the Bellona Foundation on 24th December 2002 as the basis for its examination of the case, in addition to the initial complaint of 23rd April 2001. The Applicant has, however, reserved the right to rely on any additional grounds for the complaint which may have been raised in the application form submitted by the International Protection Centre on 23rd December 2002.

In the present submission, the Applicant will summarise his pleas in the following way: The Court may proceed on the basis that the Applicant – in addition to all the complaints contained in the application form submitted by the Bellona Foundation on 24. December 2002 – only maintains three alleged breaches of the Convention which are covered by the two other application forms:

 That the conditions in detention violated Art. 3 of the Convention.
 That he was deprived of the right to review of the lawfulness of the detention according to Art. 5 (4) of the Convention – also entailing a violation of Art. 5 (3) of the Convention.
 That he was deprived of his right to a fair trial according to Art. 6 (1) of the Convention, in that the courts in a discriminatory manner allowed the prosecution to produce illegally obtained evidence.

The other complaints are thus withdrawn.

As regards the allegation that the Military Courts were not independent and impartial, it must be recalled that it follows from the case law of the European Court that a system of Military Courts are not as such incompatible with the requirements of the Convention. Indeed it is feared by those who have been involved in proceedings before the Military Courts in Russia that their independence and impartiality of these can be seriously questioned. However, it has not been possible in the present case to obtain sufficient concrete evidence to substantiate the allegation the Russian system of military courts as such does not meet the general requirements of independence and impartiality in Art. 6 of the Convention. The Applicant has thus concluded to withdraw this complaint.

In the present submission the Applicant’s arguments in regard of the above mentioned alleged breaches of Art. 3, Art 5 (4) and Art. 6 (1) will be summed up and explained in more detail. In addition the Applicants requests to the European Court are compiled and stated in full in item 5 below.

2. Violation of Art. 3 of the Convention
This complaint was raised in the Applicant’s first application form, dated 23rd April 2001. A signed statement from the Applicant concerning the conditions during his detention is submitted as Appendix 1.

The conditions during the Applicant’s detention are to a large degree comparable to those at issue in cases like Peers v. Greece judgment of 19th April 2001 and Kalashnikov v. Russia, judgment of 15th July 2002. The general requirements of Art. 3 are reiterated by the Court in the Kalashnikov judgment, para. 95:

”…, under this provision the State must ensure that a person is detained in conditions which are compatible with respect for his human dignity, that the manner and method of the execution of the measure do not subject him to distress or hardship of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention and that, given the practical demands of imprisonment, his health and well-being are adequately secured. …
When assessing conditions of detention, account has to be taken of the cumulative effects of those conditions, as well as the specific allegations made by the applicant (see Dougoz v. Greece, no. 40907/98, § 46, ECHR 2001-II).”

As in the present case, Mr. Kalashnikov’s period of detention started before Russia’s ratification of the Convention. The time spent in detention prior to Russia’s ratification was, however, also taken into account, see para. 96 of the Kalashnikov judgment:

”[The Court] recalls that, according to the generally recognised principles of international law, the Convention is binding on the Contracting States only in respect of facts occurring after its entry into force. …. However, in assessing the effect on the applicant of his conditions of detention, which were generally the same throughout his period of detention, both on remand and following his conviction, the Court may also have regard to the overall period during which he was detained, including the period prior to 5 May 1998.”

The Court’s conclusion in Kalashnikov is found in para. 102:

”102. …, the Court finds the applicant’s conditions of detention, in particular the severely overcrowded and insanitary environment and its detrimental effect on the applicant’s health and well-being, combined with the length of the period during which the applicant was detained in such conditions, amounted to degrading treatment.”

The main difference seems to bet that the Applicant in the present case spent less time in detention as compared with Mr. Kalashnikov. This, however, cannot be decisive. The Applicant spent a considerable time in detention under unacceptable conditions: He was detained from 20th November 1997 until 20th July 1999, i.e. one year and 8 months.

As explained by the Applicant in his statement he was in some periods detained in a special cell – a “glass” cell – as punishment when he refused to answer the interrogators’ questions without a lawyer present. This, of course added to the hardship suffered by him during the detention. In general, he was detained in severely overcrowded cells, and the inmates suffered from very low temperatures during winter and overheating during summer. The light was always on. There were only short walks – approximately 45 minutes – per day. There were serious wants in the medical treatment, and the Applicant caught several diseases of which he was not treated. The sanitary conditions were deplorable. In this regard, the CPT standards [CPT/Inf/E (2002) 1 must be recalled. Chapter II. Imprisonment, para. 50 reads:

“The CPT would add that it is particularly concerned when it finds a combination of overcrowding, poor regime activities and inadequate access to toilet/washing facilities in the same establishment. The cumulative effect of such conditions can prove extremely detrimental to prisoners.”

He was denied access to newspapers and other contact with the outside world until 20th May 1998. Especially, he was not allowed to have any contact with his family between 20th November 1997 and until the end of May 1998. After that his contact with his family was severely restricted, and contact with friends was forbidden all together. Also in this regard the CPT standards must be recalled. Chapter II. Imprisonment para. 51 reads:

“It is also very important for prisoners to maintain reasonably good contact with the outside world. Above all, a prisoner must be given the means of safeguarding his relationships with his family and close friends. The guiding principle should be based exclusively on security concerns of an appreciable nature and resource considerations.”

In the Applicant’s view, the severe restrictions on his contacts with family and friends could not be justified on such grounds.

Accordingly, there has been a breach of Art. 3 of the Convention.

3. Violation of Art. 5

3.1 Introduction – general principles
In its first Application form, submitted on 23rd April 2001, the International Protection Centre referred to several violations of Art. 5 of the Convention, and it seems relatively clear that several material violations of Article 5 appeared in the first weeks after the Applicant’s arrest. He was for instance not brought “promptly” before a judge in the sense of Art. 5 (3) of the Convention. However, the violations mostly occurred before Russia ratified the Convention on 5th May 1998. Russia can therefore, for formal reasons, not be held responsible for these violations. Yet, some violations continued after Russia’s ratification, and in particular the violations of Article 5 (4).

According to Art. 5 (4) of the Convention “everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful”.

It follows from the Court’s case law that national courts’ control of whether a detention is “lawful” or not, is not limited to controlling whether national procedural and material regulation have been adhered to. The general requirements are reiterated in Iljukov v. Bulgaria, judgment of 26th July 2001, para 94:

“The Court recalls that arrested or detained persons are entitled to a review bearing upon the procedural and substantive conditions which are essential for the “lawfulness”, in the sense of the Convention, of their deprivation of liberty. This means that the competent court has to examine not only compliance with the procedural requirements set out in [domestic law] but also the reasonableness of the suspicion grounding the arrest and the legitimacy of the purpose pursued by the arrest and the ensuing detention (see the Brogan and Others v. the United Kingdom judgment of 29 November 1988, Series A no. 145-B, pp. 34-35, § 65, and Grauslys v. Lithuania, no. 36743/97, §§ 51-55, 10 October 2000, unreported).”

Thus, a detainee is under Art. 5 (4) of the Convention entitled not only to a review of whether his detention was lawful according to internal law. He is also entitled to a review of whether his detention was lawful according to the principles established inter alia in Art. 5 (1) (c) of the Convention, i.e.: of whether there was a “reasonable suspicion” against him for having committed the crime he is accused of.

3.2 No proper review of the lawfulness of the detention took place
The question of the lawfulness of the Applicant’s detention was subject to several court hearings throughout his first period of detention from 20th November 1997 to 20th July 1999. The question was handled by the Vladivostok Garrison Court as first instance and by the Pacific Fleet Court as second instance. Most of the hearings took place before Russia’s ratification on 5th May 1998. However, the courts also heard the question regarding the lawfulness of the detention in August/September 1998, after the Applicant and his lawyers had finalised their reading of the case files. Reference is made to the Applicant’s statement (Appendix 1). The Applicant will seek to get access to the relevant court decisions, but it is uncertain whether his previous lawyers have kept a copy and, if not, whether he will get access to the Russian court’s case file. It is expected, however, that these court decisions will be submitted by the Russian government insofar the case is communicated to the State Party.

On each of these occasions the courts found that the Applicant’s detention was lawful and that there was no reason to change the measure of restraint from detention to, for instance, release on bail with a prohibition to leave the city of Vladivostok. This was also the outcome of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court’s evaluation of the question on 26th November 1998.

However, when evaluating the lawfulness of the detention, the courts only considered its lawfulness according to internal Russian procedural and material regulations, and not its lawfulness according to the principles of the Convention. Thus, no review of whether there was a “reasonable suspicion” against the Applicant took place. The reason is that at this point of time (1997-99) the competence of Russian courts to review the lawfulness of a detention was limited to an evaluation of various formal issues and of what measure of restraint that would be most suitable. The courts had no competence to evaluate questions related to the proof against and the culpability of the accused at the stage of the proceedings when he or her was detained before the case was brought to trial. This state of the law was first changed (and not without fierce protests from the office of the Prosecutor General) with the adoption of the new Criminal Procedure Code in 2002.

The courts’ lack of competence to evaluate questions of proof and culpability, i.e.: whether there was a reasonable suspicion against the detainee in the sense of Art. 5 (1) (c) of the Convention was not clearly stated in the 1960-edition of the Criminal Procedure Code. However, the jurisprudence on the matter was clear. In the case against Aleksandr Nikitin (see application no. 50178/99, Section II, para. 7) the Court of the St. Petersburg garrison did for instance on 4th April 1996 reject the claim of his defence that there was not sufficient evidence against him to maintain his detention, stating:

“But the lawyers claims concerning lack of evidence in the submission of the charges against Nikitin cannot be reviewed by the court because according to Article 220-2 of the Russian Criminal Procedure Code, it is not within the court’s jurisdiction to review matters of proof and culpability at the current stage in the process.”

The quotation reveals that the court did not review whether there was a reasonable suspicion against Mr. Nikitin that could justify his detention. Likewise, none of the courts that handled the lawfulness of the Applicant’s detention, which was based on the state prosecutor’s decision, evaluated whether there was a reasonable suspicion against him for having committed the crimes he were accused of.

This appears as a breach of Art. 5 (4) of the Convention, cf. Art. 5 (1) (c) of the Convention, and also of Art. 5 (3) of the Convention. The latter secures the detainee’s right to a “prompt” review of the lawfulness of the detention. There was never carried out an evaluation of whether there was a reasonable suspicion against the Applicant. Thus, his right to a “prompt” review of this issue under Art. 5 (3) of the Convention was also violated. Since these violations continued after Russia’s ratification, it is submitted that the Applicant was deprived from his right under Art. 5 (4) and Art. 5 (3) of the Convention to a prompt court review of whether his continued detention were “lawful” in the sense of Art. 5 (1) (c) of the Convention.

3.3 The significance of Russia’s reservation
The Applicant is aware of the fact that the instrument of ratification of the Convention deposited by the Russian Federation on 5th May 1998 contains the following reservation:

“In accordance with Article 64 of the Convention, the Russian Federation declares that the provisions of Article 5 paragraphs 3 and 4 shall not prevent … the temporary application, sanctioned by the second paragraph of point 6 of Section Two of the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation, of the procedure for the arrest, holding in custody and detention of persons suspected of having committed a criminal offence, established by Article 11 paragraph 1, Article 89 paragraph 1, Articles 90, 92, 96, 96-1, 96-2, 97, 101 and 122 of the RSFSR Code of Criminal Procedure of 27 October 1960, with subsequent amendments and additions.”

However, it follows from the Court’s judgment of 15th July 2002 in Kalashnikov that the range of this reservation is limited. The Court observed that the reservation is concerned with “the procedure for applying preventive custody measures” and found that it does not apply to the length of the detention (para. 107-108). While the provisions referred to in the reservation deals with procedures for arrest, holding in custody and detention of suspects, and lists the authorities to take the respective decisions, none of them deals with the courts’ lack of competence to evaluate questions of proof and culpability when controlling whether a detention is lawful or not. Article 220-2 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which the court of the St. Petersburg garrison referred to as the basis for its lack competence to evaluate the lawfulness of Mr. Nikitin’s detention (see above), is for instance, not among the provisions mentioned in the reservation.

Accordingly, the Applicant submits that the reservation does not apply to the facts of the present complaint. This interpretation of the reservation is, moreover, submitted by the principle that a reservation may not be incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention, se Art. 19 (c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. In this regard it must be noted that a system which does not empower the courts to review the reasonableness of the suspicion grounding the arrest and the legitimacy of the purpose pursued by the arrest and the ensuing detention, if fact opens up for arbitrary and unduly prolonged detentions on remand and is clearly incompatible with the requirements of the rule of law and the basic objective that the Convention shall afford rights that are not theoretical or illusory, but practical and effective.

3.4 Conclusion
It is on the basis of the above-mentioned submitted that Russia’s reservation against Art. 5 (3) and 5 (4) of the Convention does not apply in relation to facts at issue in the present application. Consequently, the Applicant’s rights under Art. 5 (4) and Art. 5 (3) of the Convention have been violated in the way set out above.

4. Art. 6 (1) – fair trial/illegal use of evidence

4.1 Introduction – general principles
The Centre has in its additional complaint dated 23rd December 2002 also brought up as an issue under Article 6 (1) the fact that the Applicant was convicted on the basis of evidence which was obtained in violation of the then prevailing Russian Criminal Procedure Code.

As pointed out in Section II (para. 3, 20 and 21) of the Application form prepared by Bellona, the search of the applicant’s flat on 20th November 1997 was carried out in violation of Articles 169, 170 (1) and 176 (2) of the Russian Criminal Procedure Code. The officers in charge of the search were not authorised to conduct this investigative act, witnesses were not at all times present in the rooms searched by the investigators, and no proper protocol over the seized documents was kept. Even though the Pacific Fleet Court acknowledged these violations in its verdict of 25th December 2001, where it notes that the “investigation conducted violations of the Criminal Procedure Code during the search and survey, the court still allowed that the evidence found at the search was used.

According to the Court’s case law this does in itself not constitute a violation of the fair trial principle laid down in Art. 6 of the Convention. The Court’s case law has established that “the admissibility of evidence is primarily a matter for regulation by national law and as a general rule it is for the national court to assess the evidence before them”. Consequently, the Court’s main task under the Convention is “to ascertain whether the proceedings as a whole, including the way in which evidence was taken, were fair” (Van Mechelen and others v. the Netherlands, April 23, 1997, para. 50). See also Schenk v. Switzerland (A 140, July 12, 1988) in which the Court stated (para. 46):

“While Article 6 of the Convention guarantees the right to a fair trial, it does not lay down any rules on the admissibility of evidence as such, which is therefore primarily a matter for regulation under national law. The Court therefore cannot exclude as a matter of principle and in the abstract that unlawfully obtained evidence of the present kind may be admissible. It has only to ascertain whether Mr. Schenk’s trial as a whole was fair.”

Thus, a national court’s use of illegally obtained evidence is in itself not sufficient to constitute a violation of the fair trial principle. In the present case, however, it is ample evidence for the proposition that the illegally obtained evidence was allowed by the Russian courts in a discriminatory manner. The Applicant thus complains that there has been a breach of Art. 6 (1) of the Convention taken together with Art. 14 of the Convention. This is proved both by the fact that Russian law clearly prohibits the use of illegally obtained evidence, and by the fact the illegally obtained evidence was not accepted by Russian courts in the Nikitin case. The Applicant does not have access to evidence that might explain why the courts accepted the illegally obtained evidence in his case. However, if the illegally obtained evidence had not been accepted, he would have been acquitted of all the charges. The Applicant for his part, fear that the unacceptability of this conclusion of the trial might have affected the decision to accept the evidence.

4.2 Russian courts breached general principles established in internal law
According to the Court’s case law the question of admissibility of evidence is “primarily a matter for regulations under national law”. Russian legislation has several provisions regarding this issue.

Article 50 (2) of the Russian Constitution states that “no evidence obtained in violation of the federal law shall be allowed” in the administration of justice. A similar principle was evident of Article 69 (3) of the edition of the Criminal Procedure Code that was in force when illegal search of the Applicant’s flat was carried out. The provision stated: “Evidence, which is obtained in violations of the law, shall have no legal force and can not form the basis of any criminal charge, and can neither be used in order to prove circumstances mentioned in Article 68 of this Codex”. [ According to Article 68 the following circumstances are subject to the production of evidence in a criminal case: the crime event (time, place, method and other circumstances related to the execution of the crime); the accused’s guilt and motives; circumstances that influences on the accused criminal liability; the damage caused by the crime; and other causes and conditions that has contributed to the execution of the crime).]

Thus, judged from the unambiguously wording of these provisions all evidence that was obtained at the search of the Applicant’s flat should have been disallowed. This includes his hand-written notes from the meeting of the Military Council of the Pacific Fleet on 11th September 1997, which served as the basis for the conviction. However, in its 25th December 2001 verdict the Pacific Fleet Court did not adhere to the principles of the Constitution and the Criminal Procedure Code, but stated:

“The court has established that the investigation conducted violations of the Criminal Procedural Code during the search and survey. However, the court does not find any grounds to admit the protocols [regarding the confiscation of the Applicant’s hand-written notes] invalid as these violations do not influence [on] the objectivity of the conclusion regarding the fact that the notes really belonged to Pasko and were kept by him.”

In its verdict of 25th June 2002, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court also touched upon the admissibility of the notes as evidence. After having referred to the appeal of the defence, the Collegium stated that the Pacific Fleet Court gave “these violations the appropriate estimation in its verdict” and that it “came to the substantiated conclusion about their admissibility”.
Thus, both courts ignored Article 50 (2) of the Constitution and Article 69 (3) of the Russian Criminal Procedure Code. It may be true that the violations carried out by the investigation did not influence their evaluation of whether or not the notes belonged to the Applicant and were kept by him, but it remains that according to these provisions the notes should have been disallowed. When the courts ruled that the notes were admissible, it would therefore be reasonable to expect that they would have addressed the legal limitations regarding the use of unlawfully obtained evidence and explained why these limitations were ignored. However, neither the Pacific Fleet Court nor the Military Collegium discussed the issue. This does not inspire confidence in the fairness of the trial.
The reason stated for allowing the notes being used as evidence is not particularly convincing from a legal point of view. Neither the wording of Article 50 (2) of the Constitution nor of Article 69 (3) of the Russian Criminal Procedure Code gives basis for narrowing their range so that they only apply in cases were the illegal obtaining of evidence would influence on the courts’ evaluation of particular facts of the case. Nor have the courts referred to any other sources of law (legislation, court rulings, preliminary works, juridical theory, etc.) which can give basis for their narrow interpretation. In fact, the provisions are more or less invalidated, as illegalities committed while obtaining the evidence of a criminal case only rarely will influence on the factual circumstances of the case.

If the state of affairs within the Russian judiciary had developed in such a way that the provisions stating that illegally obtained evidence should be disallowed never was used, the Government could perhaps have been able to justify that these provisions were not used in the Applicant’s case either. This is, however, not the case. On the contrary, the principle that evidence that have been illegally obtained shall be disallowed has been adhered to in other Russian criminal cases.

In the case against Aleksandr Nikitin, the St. Petersburg City Court did for instance comment the use of illegally obtained evidence the following way its verdict 29th December 1999:

“At the same time the court examined the evidence – the protocol of the search at Nikitin’s flat of October 5, 1995 submitted by the body of preliminary investigation (vol. 5 sheet 102-108). During the search the defendant’s notebook was found and confiscated. The notebook had blue cover and notes in red ink (vol. 5 sheet 107 – protocol 66, vol. 6 sheet 41). These notes were the foundation for the charges against Nikitin. The court finds that this evidence was obtained in violation of Articles 69 and 70 of the Russian Criminal Procedure Code.

As it comes from the presented materials, the investigative action – FSB investigator Osipenko conducted the search at Nikitin’s flat on October 5, 1995. However, the criminal case was launched on October 5, 1995 (vol.1 sheet 2) and given to the FSB investigator Maksimenkov. According to the decision of the chief of the FSB investigation body the investigation team was established on October 6, 1995 (vol. 5 sheet 3). Osipenko was not included in the team. Only on April 1, 1996 Osipenko was included in the investigation team in a proper way in accordance with the decision of the chief of the FSB investigation body (vol.1, sheet 4).

At the same time it is evident from the case files that nobody entrusted investigator Osipenko with conducting the investigative actions, search at defendant Nikitin’s flat. And he did not have the rights to do that.

Taking into consideration the above mentioned, the court finds that this evidence (protocol of the search of October 5, 1995) due to the requirements of Article 69 para. 3 of the Russian Criminal Procedure Code, is obtained with the violations of the law and should be excluded as unacceptable.”

Thus, the St. Petersburg City Court excluded the evidence that according to its own words “were the foundation for the charges”. This shows that the principle stated in Article 69 (3) is of considerable weight. It is also noteworthy that the illegalities that were committed by the investigation when obtaining the notebook did not influence the facts that the notebook belonged to him or that the notes in it were made by him. Still in contrast to the Pacific Fleet Court, the St. Petersburg City Court adhered to the wording of Article 69 (3) and disallowed the illegally obtained evidence.

The City Court’s law application was confirmed by the Supreme Court’s Collegium of Criminal Cases. In its 17th April 2000 ruling, the Collegium commented the prosecution’s appeal regarding the city court’s application of article 69 (3) of the Criminal Procedure Code the following way:

“The Court collegium agrees with the conclusion of the court of first instance about the illegality of the search at Nikitin’s flat on October 5, 1995, as it was conducted by the investigator who did not deal with the case.”

The office of the Russian Prosecutor General appealed the Collegium’s verdict to the Presidium of the Supreme Court on 30th May 2000. The appeal acknowledges that the law was violated during the search of Nikitin’s flat, but apart from hinting that this violation does not change the factual circumstances of the case, it does not directly address the issue related to whether the illegally obtained evidence should be disallowed or not. Thus, this issue is not specifically commented in the Presidium’s verdict of 13th September 2000. The Presidium did, however, “not find any grounds to accept the appeal”. The effect of this is that Russia’s highest legal authority approved the verdicts of the St. Petersburg City Court and the Supreme Court Collegium and left them without changes.

It should also be noted that the Pacific Fleet Court disallowed illegally obtained evidence at the first trial against the Applicant. In its verdict dated 20th July 1999 it stated:

“At the same time the Court considers that not all the evidence mentioned in the indictment were obtained in accordance with the law.
…
The falsification was also allowed during the report’s preparation regarding the inspection of things and documents confiscated from Pasko on November 20-21, 1997, while his flat was searched (vol. 5, p. 24-46). This is confirmed by two expert conclusions. The expert, who carried out the graphological expertise, established that, in particular “the signatures on behalf of the witnesses weren’t made by the same persons on page 4 and 5 of the report.”

Taken into account the above-mentioned, the Court excludes both reports from the evidence of the case.”

The Pacific Fleet Court does not refer to any law provisions, but its ruling demonstrates that the principle that illegally obtained evidence shall be disallowed in a criminal case is the prevailing law. Even though the Supreme Court’s Military Collegium quashed the verdict on 21st November 2000, the reason was not that the Pacific Fleet Court disallowed illegally obtained evidence, but the fact that the verdict suffered from various flaws (see Section II para. 12 of Bellona’s Application form).

Thus, there exists a precedent that evidence obtained in violation of the law shall be disallowed in accordance with the principles expressed in Article 69 (3) of the Criminal Procedure Code and Article 50 (2) of the Constitution. The fact that this precedent was not adhered to at the second trial against the Applicant and that the courts failed to discuss the range of the said provisions, leads to the conclusion that his procedural guarantees were applied to him in an unlawful and discriminatory manner.

4.3 Conclusion
Russian legislation has provisions on the constitutional and on the federal level that unambiguously states that illegally obtained evidence shall be disallowed. There are no exceptions from this rule, neither in the Constitution, the Criminal Procedure Code or elsewhere. Moreover, internal jurisprudence shows that this principle has considerable weight in the internal administration of justice. It is thus, submitted that the Pacific Fleet Court’s and the Military Collegium’s complete neglect of these provisions and use of the illegally obtained notes as decisive evidence against the Applicant constitutes a violation of the fair trial principle laid down in Art. 6 of the Convention taken together with Art. 14 of the Convention.

In this respect it is also reason to underline that there are several other features related to the criminal proceedings against the Applicant that substantiates this allegation. See for instance the account given in the Application form prepared by Bellona (Section III, para. 25 – 31) regarding the violations of the principles of equality of arms and adversarial proceedings, the right to adequate time and facilities for the preparation of the defence and the presumption of innocence.

5. Request to the Court
Based on all the application forms submitted by the Applicant, and in the light of the present submission, the Applicant respectfully requests the European Court to:

1. Hold that there has been a violation of Article 3 of the Convention regarding the conditions during his detention.
2. Hold that there has been a violation of Art. 5 (4) and Art. 5 (3) of the Convention regarding the review by Russian courts of the lawfulness of his detention.
3. Hold that there has been a violation of Art. 6 of the Convention because the charges against him were not determined within reasonable time.
4. Hold that there has been a breach of Art. 6 of the Convention because his right to a fair trial was not respected; The principles of equality of arms and adversarial proceedings were not respected, and his right to have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of the defence and his right to be presumed innocent were violated.
5. Hold that there has been a breach of Art. 6 of the Convention, taken together with Art. 14 of the Convention, regarding the Russian courts’ use of illegally obtained evidence.
6. Hold that there has been a violation of art. 7 of the Convention because of retroactive use, and the extensive interpretation, of Criminal law.
7. Hold that there has been a breach of Art. 10 of the Convention.
8. Hold that the respondent state shall afford just satisfaction to the Applicant and to reimburse costs and expenses.

Attachments:
Conditions in pre-trial detention Centre no. 20/1, November 20, 1997 to July 20, 1999