Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt that he had also found beer cans in the bin, thus making the applicant’s line of defence not fully vexatious or improbable (…). Accordingly, the evidence of the police officers, as witnesses for the prosecution, could have been refuted by the statements of the other three eyewitnesses (…). In the absence of any material evidence such as fingerprint or DNA traces, which were never retrieved from the package although the defence requested it, those witness statements could have played a significant role in strengthening the position of the applicant’s defence or even led to his acquittal (…), given that the criminal court is bound by the in dubio pro reo principle(…).”621 Again, in the case of Navalnyy and Yashin622 the Court has required that an applicant must be “afforded a reasonable opportunity to present his case under conditions that do not place him at a disadvantage vis-à-vis his opponent”623. The Court has also found that: “(…)the circumstances of the applicants’ confrontation with the riot police had been in dispute between the parties to the administrative proceedings (…). However, the courts acting in those proceedings had decided to base their judgment exclusively on the version put forward by the police and had refused to accept additional evidence, such as video recordings, or to call other witnesses, when the applicants sought to prove that the police had not given any orders before arresting them. The Court considers that in the dispute over the key facts underlying the charges where the only witnesses for the prosecution were the police officers who had played an active role in the contested events; it was indispensable for the Justice of the Peace and the Tverskoy District Court to exhaust every reasonable possibility of verifying their incriminating statements (…). The failure to do so ran contrary to the basic requirement that the prosecution has to prove its case and one of the fundamental principles of criminal law, namely, in dubio pro reo.(…).624 It is clear that the applicant should have had the right to prove the facts in favour of his defence, but was rejected by the court to do so. Interesting for observation are the stands of the Court referring to the issue of detention, in the sense of whether the prosecution managed to present sufficient evidence to prove that there was reasonable suspicion in the defendant’s guilt. Namely, in the case of Stepuleac625 the lawfulness of the detention and whether there were sufficient reasons for the detention were questioned. The applicant was the owner of a security company, which secured a petrol supply company. Upon a complaint by the petrol supply company that one of employees of the security company allegedly stole fuel, the applicant, Ibid. §40, §42, §43, §44, §45. Navalnyy and Yashin v. Russia, no.76204/11, ECHR, 20.04.2015 623 Ibid. §82. 624 Ibid. §83. 625 Stepuleac v. Moldova, no. 8207/06, ECHR, 06.02.2008. 621 622 136