AL-NASHIF v. BULGARIA JUDGMENT 33 three applicants under Articles 8 and 13 of the Convention. Ruling on an equitable basis, the Court awards EUR 7,000 to the first applicant and EUR 5,000 to each of the remaining two applicants (a total of EUR 17,000). B. Costs and expenses 149. The applicants claimed 5,845 US dollars (“USD”) for 118 hours of legal work on the proceedings before the Court, at the hourly rate of USD 40, and for 45 hours of work with the domestic institutions, at the hourly rate of USD 25. The applicants submitted a time sheet and an agreement between them and their lawyers and referred to a publication which reported that the leading business law firms in Bulgaria charged between USD 80 and 190 per hour. They also claimed USD 792 airfare for their attorneys Mr Grozev and Mrs Yaneva and 2,650 French francs for hotel bills, local travel and per diem for their appearance at the hearing before the Court. The total amount claimed by the applicants for costs and expenses is the equivalent of approximately EUR 7,750. 150. The Government considered that contingency fee agreements were immoral and that lawyers should provide free legal aid to indigent clients. They submitted that the hourly rates claimed were exorbitant in view of the low minimum wage in Bulgaria. The Government further contested the number of hours allegedly spent by the lawyers on the domestic and Strasbourg proceedings. In particular, Mrs Yaneva could not claim that she had spent ten hours on seven visits to the detention centre at Sofia airport as she had never met Mr Al-Nashif. Further, Mrs Yaneva had not indicated the dates of her purported five visits to the Smolyan Regional Court. Also, seven hours' work for the preparation of appeals to five different bodies had not been required as the text had been identical. 151. The Court reiterates that only legal costs and expenses found to have been actually and necessarily incurred and which are reasonable as to quantum are recoverable under Article 41 of the Convention (see, among other authorities, Nikolova v. Bulgaria [GC], no. 31195/96, 25 March n99, § 79). The fact that Mrs Yaneva was unable to meet Mr Al-Nashif at the detention centre – where he spent 26 days in complete isolation – was an aspect of the violation of Article 5 § 4 found in the present case. Her visits to the detention centre, apparently in an effort to obtain a meeting with her client, obviously constituted costs necessarily incurred in the defence of his Convention rights. The Court rejects the Government's submission that the number of hours claimed exceeded the legal work which was actually done and which needed to be done for the representation of the applicants.