SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE ZIEMELE JOINED BY JUDGE GYULUMYAN

1. I voted with the majority in finding that there had been a violation of Article 3 as concerns the applicant ’ s complaints about the conditions of his detention in various detention facilities. Nevertheless, I had difficulty in accepting that the third period of detention in the Chişinău General Police Department between 9 and 21 February 2007 should not be treated as part of a continuing situation according to the Court ’ s definition (see paragraphs 26-27 of the judgment) and that because that period of detention lasted only twelve days it was too short to raise problems under Article 3.

2. This part of the judgment, dealing with admissibility issues, is based on the approach taken in the case of Guliyev v. Russia (no. 24650/02, 19 June 2008), and attempts to contrast it with the case of I.D. v. Moldova (no. 47203/06, 30 November 2010). In the present case there were three separate detention periods with longer or shorter periods of liberty in between (see paragraph 12 of the judgment). In the Guliyev case, the applicant was detained in two different facilities in immediate succession – that is, the Court was faced with the simple transfer of the applicant from one place to another. The question of how to apply the six-month rule did not arise in the same way as in the case before us. In the I.D. case, the different places of detention were characterised by different problems. Where the Court, as in the case before us, has gone so far as to say that the main criterion for a continuing situation is its character, even if the applicant ’ s detention has not been continuous, I find it difficult to say that a three-week gap such as that between the second and the third period – as opposed to, for example, a seven-day gap – disqualifies the last period from being part of a continuing situation. Certainly, this was not the approach taken in the Guliyev case since the facts were different; it is thus difficult to consider that that case should provide the solution to be followed in our case. In any event, I find that the case-law on the question of what constitutes a continuing situation with respect to conditions in different detention facilities at different periods of time remains very unclear.