5.  The applicant was born in 1982 and lives in Tiraspol.
6.  The background to the case, including the Transdniestrian armed conflict of 1991-1992 and the subsequent events, is set out in Ilaşcu and Others v. Moldova and Russia ([GC], no. 48787/99, §§ 28-185, ECHR 2004‑VII) and Catan and Others v. the Republic of Moldova and Russia ([GC], nos. 43370/04 and 2 others, §§ 8-42, ECHR 2012 (extracts)).
7.  On 21 January 2005 the applicant was arrested by the authorities of the break-away “Moldavian Republic of Transdniestria” (the “MRT”) on charges of robbery. He was detained in custody until 8 July 2005 when he was released on bail. During detention he was allegedly detained in very poor conditions with persons with HIV and subjected to ill-treatment. He claims that a doctor infected him with HIV after using the same syringe on all the inmates.
8.  During the criminal proceedings, two and a half years after the robbery, the victim of the robbery was asked to identify the applicant from a picture. The applicant claims that no procedural guarantees were in place and suggests that the investigator indicated to the victim which picture to choose. Moreover, the applicant’s alibi regarding his being away from the “MRT” on the date when the offence was committed had been dismissed without any investigation. According to the applicant, at the time of the alleged offence, he was in Moscow. He obtained a letter from his employer to confirm that on the particular day of the offence the applicant had been at work. However, the investigators seized the original of that letter during a search of his parents’ home and it later disappeared. The courts refused to accept a copy of the letter as evidence and/or to check the information contained in it.
9.  On 29 August 2006 the Tiraspol District Court convicted the applicant as charged and sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment.
10.  The applicant was placed in detention in Tiraspol colony no. 2 where the conditions allegedly were very poor. In particular, his cell was overcrowded, he did not have daily walks, the material conditions were very poor, there were shortages of electricity sometimes for several days, and he shared space with detainees suffering from contagious diseases. The food was inedible and therefore detainees had to rely on the food supplied to them by their relatives. According to the applicant, he requested on numerous occasions that he be seen by a doctor in relation to his HIV diagnosis. However, the prison authorities ignored his requests. There was no dentist in the prison, and the inmates had to remove each other’s teeth in emergencies. The applicant had his molar teeth removed in this way.
11.  On 26 September 2006 the Supreme Court of the “MRT” dismissed the applicant’s appeal.
12.  On an unspecified date after his final conviction, the applicant’s mother engaged a lawyer with a view to lodging an application to the Court. She later went to visit the applicant to obtain his signature on the application form. However, the prison guards refused to allow her to do so on the grounds that the application was not in Russian and that it had to be authorised first by the prison authorities. It appears that she eventually succeeded in having the application form signed by the applicant.
13.  On 24 April 2012 the applicant was released from detention.
14.  It appears from the material in the case file and from the parties’ submissions that the applicant never informed the authorities of Moldova about his detention in the “MRT” or about the criminal proceedings against him.