On July 17, 2014, The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held in Svinarenko and Slyadnev v. Russia that holding remand prisoners in metal cages during their court hearings violated Article 3 (prohibition of torture and of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention).  According to the press release, “the Court found that the applicants had been subjected to distress of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in their detention during a court appearance, and that, therefore, their confinement in a cage had attained the ‘minimum level of severity’ to bring it within the scope of Article 3.”  The Court also found a violation of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial within a reasonable time) of the Convention, noting that despite the complexity of the case, the length of the criminal proceedings, “which had lasted six years and ten months in the case of Mr Svinarenko and six and a half years in the case of Mr Slyadnev,” were unreasonable.