FIRST SECTION

DECISION

Application no . 53399/08 Aleksey Nikolayevich SHLYKOV against Russia

The European Court of Human Rights ( First Section ), sitting on 9 December 2014 as a Committee composed of:

Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska , President, Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque, Ksenija Turković , judges, and André Wampach , Deputy Section Registrar ,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 2 September 2008 ,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

1. The applicant, Mr Aleksey Nikolayevich Shlykov , is a Russian national, who was born in 1985 and live s in Nizhniy Novgorod .

2. The Russian Government (“the Government”) were represented by Mr G. Matyushkin , the Representative of the Russian Federation at the European Court of Human Rights .

3. On 17 January 2008 the applicant was arrested on drug-related charges. The following day his detention was authorised by a court and subsequently extended at regular intervals.

4. Between 18 January and 24 August 2008 the applicant was held in remand prison IZ-52/1 in Nizhniy Novgorod . According to the applicant, the facility was overcrowded.

5. The applicant alleged that on 6 February 2008 several policemen visited him in the remand prison and coerced him in order to extract confession.

6. On 6 May 2010 the Presidium of the Nizhniy Novgorod Regional Court on the basis of multiple pieces of evidence, the materials of covert recordings of the applicant being among them, found him guilty of an attempted sale of drugs and gave him a custodial sentence.

7 . On 2 September 2008 the applicant sent his first letter to the Court, which read as follows:

“Petition

In connection with the grave violations of my Convention rights caused by my unlawful detention and inhuman and degrading treatment, [by] my unlawful conviction in the absence of evidence and [by] the deprivation of [my] right to an independent and impartial tribunal ... I consider it necessary to apply to the European Court of Human Rights for the protection, as neither the Russian courts nor the prosecutors ... are capable of restoring the justice.

In view of the above, I request you to register my preliminary complaint and to send me an application form, which I will complete and return with all the necessary documents.”

8. By letter of 6 November 2008, the Court sent the applicant an application package.

9 . On 15 April 2009 the Court received the completed application form which was dated 25 March 2009. It contained, among other things, a detailed description of the applicant ’ s conditions of detention in remand prison IZ-52/1 of Nizhniy Novgorod.

COMPLAINT S

10. The applicant complained under Article 3 of the Convention about the conditions of his pre-trial detention in remand prison IZ-52/1 in Nizhniy Novgorod between 18 January and 24 August 2008 .

11. Invoking other Convention provisions, the applicant complained about the coercion from the policemen, that his pre-trial detention had been unlawful and devoid of relevant and sufficient reasons, that the covert recordings used to convict him had been obtained in violation of the domestic law and that the criminal proceedings against him had been unfair.

THE LAW

A. The conditions of the applicant ’ s detention in remand prison IZ ‑ 52/1 in Nizhniy Novgorod

12. The Government submitted that the complaint had been inadmissible, as the application form of 25 March 2009 had been returned after a long delay. Therefore, the date when it was signed should be taken as the date of lodging of the complaint. Given that the period of the applicant ’ s detention had ended on 24 August 20 08, the complaint was lodged out of time .

13. The Court must therefore establish the date of introduction of the complaint. However, it does not consider it necessary to examine whether the application form was submitted with an undue delay for the following reasons.

14. The Court has consistently held that a complaint is characterised by the facts alleged in it and not merely by the legal grounds or arguments relied on (see Scoppola v. Italy (no. 2) [GC], no. 10249/03, § 54, 17 September 2009 ; Powell and Rayner v. the United Kingdom , 21 February 1990, § 29 , Series A no. 172 , and Guerra and Others v. Italy , 19 February 1998, § 44 , Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998 ‑ I ).

15 . In the present case the applicant ’ s first letter (see paragraph 7 above) did not sufficiently set out the subject matter of his complaint under Article 3 of the Convention with an indication of the factual basis of that complaint and the nature of the alleged violation (see Zverev v. Russia ( dec. ), no. 16234/05, § 13, 3 July 2012) . His complaint pertaining to the conditions of his detention was set out for the first time in the application form of 25 March 2009.

16 . In these circumstances, the Court finds that the complaint about the conditions of the applicant ’ s detention in remand prison IZ-52/1 in Nizhniy Novgorod was introduced on 25 March 2009, seven months after the applicant ’ s stay in that facility had ended.

17. The Court considers therefore that the applicant ’ s complaint concerning the conditions of his detention in remand prison IZ-52/1 in Nizhniy Novgorod should be rejected as belated in accordance with Article 35 § 1 of the Convention.

B. Other alleged violations of the Convention

18. As to the applicant ’ s remaining allegations, i n the light of all the material in its possession and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, the Court considers that these grievances do not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols. Accordingly, the Court rejects them as manifestly ill-founded, pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention .

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

André Wampach Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska              Deputy Registrar President