SELMOUNI v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 33 109. The Government, for their part, indicated that the proceedings had begun on 15 March 1993, the date on which the criminal complaint and application to join the proceedings as a civil party had actually been lodged with the investigating judge. 110. The Commission considered that the proceedings had not begun until 15 March 1993, the date on which the applicant’s complaint was registered. 111. The Court considers that the period to be taken into consideration in examining the length of the proceedings with regard to the “reasonable time” requirement laid down in Article 6 § 1 began when the applicant expressly lodged a complaint while being interviewed by an officer of the National Police Inspectorate, that is, on 1 December 1992 (see paragraph 24 above). The Court notes that this simple form of criminal complaint is a remedy afforded by French law and that the public prosecutor was informed of the applicant’s complaint as early as 2 December 1992, when the record of the interview by the officer was transferred to him (see paragraph 25 above). Having regard to the nature and extreme seriousness of the alleged acts, the Court does not consider that it should take as the starting-point 1 February 1993, the date on which the applicant lodged a criminal complaint and an application to join the proceedings as a civil party (see paragraph 28 above and the Tomasi judgment cited above, pp. 20 and 43, §§ 46 and 124 respectively) or, a fortiori, the date on which that complaint and application were registered. B. Reasonableness of the length of the proceedings 112. The reasonableness of the length of proceedings is to be assessed in the light of the particular circumstances of the case, regard being had to the criteria laid down in the Court’s case-law, in particular the complexity of the case and the conduct of the applicant and of the relevant authorities (see, among many other authorities, the Vernillo judgment cited above, pp. 12-13, § 30, and the Acquaviva v. France judgment of 21 November 1995, Series A no. 333-A, pp. 15-16, § 53). 1. Arguments before the Court 113. The applicant submitted that the length itself could not be explained either by the complexity of the case or by his conduct. As regards the conduct of the judicial authorities, the applicant distinguished between two different periods. From 29 November 1991 to 27 April 1994 the authorities’ conduct would have been relatively diligent if they had not waited too long before having him interviewed by an officer of the National Police Inspectorate and requesting that the case be transferred to another court. The second period had lasted from 27 April 1994 to the present. During that period the judicial authorities had failed to show any diligence in the