4.  The applicant was born in 1981 and lives in Kirovograd. 5.  On 2 June 1998 he was arrested on suspicion of robbery. He remained in detention throughout the major part of the proceedings against him. The applicant states, without providing any supporting documents, that during the first days of his detention unspecified police officers beat him. He also states that the police rejected his representative’s request to send him for medical examination. 6.  Following the completion of the pre-trial investigation, on 19 December 1998 the case was referred to the Leninskyy District Court of Kirovograd (“the District Court”), which on 17 July 2001 delivered the judgment. On 2 April 2002 the Kirovograd Regional Court of Appeal (“the Court of Appeal”) upheld it. On 12 November 2002 the Supreme Court quashed it and remitted the case for fresh consideration. 7.  On 24 December 2004 the District Court found the applicant guilty as charged and sentenced him to six years’ imprisonment. It rejected, as unsubstantiated, his complaint about beating in police custody. 8.  On an unspecified date the applicant’s representative lodged a complaint with the same court alleging that some of the court hearings had not been tape-recorded. On 24 May 2005 the court informed him that they had not been recorded because the tape recorder had been broken. 9.  On 19 May 2005 and 2 February 2006, respectively, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court upheld the judgment of 24 December 2004. 10.  On 14 August 2007 the applicant was released on parole. 11.  According to the Government, in the course of the proceedings the investigators brought charges against five other persons and interrogated thirty seven witnesses and seven aggrieved parties; the courts heard five co‑defendants, twenty four witnesses and six aggrieved parties. This took the authorities about three months in total. Six hearings were adjourned due to the absence of the applicant’s representative, which delayed the proceedings to three months and ten days. Thirty two hearings were adjourned mainly due to the absence of the witnesses, the aggrieved parties, other co-defendants or their representatives or following their requests, as well as due to the absence of the judge or the prosecutor. Thirteen times the courts applied compulsory summonses on the witnesses and aggrieved parties which repeatedly failed to appear. Thirteen expert examinations were carried out, their overall duration amounting to approximately seven months.