LABITA v. ITALY JUDGMENT 29 150. The Government accepted that the applicant's detention pending trial had been lengthy, but contended that it had been justified in the instant case in view of the weighty evidence against him. The Government argued in particular that where, as here, a case concerned Mafia-related offences, the authorities had an obligation to conduct an exceptionally stringent and thorough inquiry through a “maxi-trial”, which inevitably entailed very lengthy and complex investigations and hearings. 151. The Commission considered that the longer the investigation went on the more necessary it became for the authorities to have concrete and specific proof of the presumed risks of the applicant's absconding, reoffending or tampering with evidence. The presumption that arose under Article 273 of the Code of Criminal Procedure did not by itself justify the applicant's being held for so long. Furthermore, the Commission considered that the proceedings in issue were not conducted with the expedition that Article 5 § 3 demanded. Despite the fact that the evidence against the applicant was very weak, the Government had confined themselves to asserting, in general terms, that complex banking and fiscal investigations had to be conducted, without identifying the steps that had to be and were in fact taken. (b) The Court's assessment (i) Principles established under the Court's case-law 152. Under the Court's case-law, the issue of whether a period of detention is reasonable cannot be assessed in abstracto. Whether it is reasonable for an accused to remain in detention must be assessed in each case according to its special features. Continued detention can be justified in a given case only if there are specific indications of a genuine requirement of public interest which, notwithstanding the presumption of innocence, outweighs the rule of respect for individual liberty (see, among other authorities, the W. v. Switzerland judgment of 26 January 1993, Series A no. 254-A, p. 15, § 30). It falls in the first place to the national judicial authorities to ensure that, in a given case, the pre-trial detention of an accused person does not exceed a reasonable time. To this end they must examine all the facts arguing for or against the existence of a genuine requirement of public interest justifying, with due regard to the principle of the presumption of innocence, a departure from the rule of respect for individual liberty and set them out in their decisions dismissing the applications for release. It is essentially on the basis of the reasons given in these decisions and of the true facts mentioned by the applicant in his appeals, that the Court is called upon to decide whether or not there has been a violation of Article 5 § 3 of the Convention. 153. The persistence of reasonable suspicion that the person arrested has committed an offence is a condition sine qua non for the lawfulness of the