MEDVEDYEV AND OTHERS v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 37 (b) Automatic nature of the review 122. The review must be automatic and not depend on the application of the detained person; in this respect it must be distinguished from Article 5 § 4, which gives a detained person the right to apply for release. The automatic nature of the review is necessary to fulfil the purpose of that paragraph, as a person subjected to ill-treatment might be incapable of lodging an application asking for a judge to review their detention; the same might also be true of other vulnerable categories of arrested person, such as the mentally frail or those ignorant of the language of the judicial officer (see Aquilina, cited above). (c) The characteristics and powers of the judicial officer 123. Since Article 5 § 1 (c) forms a whole with Article 5 § 3, “competent legal authority” in paragraph 1 (c) is a synonym, of abbreviated form, for “judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power” in paragraph 3 (see, among other authorities, Lawless v. Ireland (no. 3), 1 July 1961, Series A no. 3, and Schiesser, cited above, § 29). 124. The judicial officer must offer the requisite guarantees of independence from the executive and the parties, which precludes his subsequent intervention in criminal proceedings on behalf of the prosecuting authority, and he or she must have the power to order release, after hearing the individual and reviewing the lawfulness of, and justification for, the arrest and detention (see, among many other authorities, Assenov and Others v. Bulgaria, 28 October 1998, §§ 146 and 149, Reports 1998-VIII). As regards the scope of that review, the formulation which has been at the basis of the Court’s long-established case-law dates back to the early Schiesser case (cited above, § 31): “In addition, under Article 5 para. 3 (art. 5-3), there is both a procedural and a substantive requirement. The procedural requirement places the ‘officer’ under the obligation of hearing himself the individual brought before him (see, mutatis mutandis, the above-mentioned Winterwerp judgment, p. 24, para. 60); the substantive requirement imposes on him the obligations of reviewing the circumstances militating for or against detention, of deciding, by reference to legal criteria, whether there are reasons to justify detention and of ordering release if there are no such reasons (above-mentioned Ireland v. the United Kingdom judgment, p. 76, para. 199).” Or, in other words, “Article 5 § 3 requires the judicial officer to consider the merits of the detention” (see T.W. v. Malta, and Aquilina, both cited above, § 41 and § 47 respectively). 125. The initial automatic review of arrest and detention accordingly must be capable of examining lawfulness issues and whether or not there is a reasonable suspicion that the arrested person has committed an offence; in other words, whether detention falls within the permitted exceptions set out in Article 5 § 1 (c). When the detention does not, or is unlawful, the judicial officer must then have the power to release (see McKay, cited above, § 40).