XIII. Detention in Greece: Inhuman and Degrading Treatment

Although Greek police authorities did not give Human Rights Watch unimpeded access to assess conditions of detention in the locations we asked to visit, we were able to gather testimonies from detainees that paint an alarming picture of police mistreatment, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions, particularly in places where we were not allowed to visit, such as border police stations, the airport, Venna, and Mitilini.  The detention conditions and police abuses described in the three preceding sections of this report certainly constitute inhuman and degrading treatment.

Our findings are consistent with those of other bodies.[207]  For example, in February 2007 the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) visited 24 police stations and migrant detention centers under the authority of the Secretariat of Public Order and found that "persons deprived of their liberty by law enforcement officials in Greece run a real risk of being ill-treated."[208]  The CPT went on to say:

[T]here has been no improvement as regards the manner in which persons detained by law enforcement agencies are treated [since the CPT's 2005 visit to Greece].  The CPT's delegation heard, once again, a considerable number of allegations of ill-treatment of detained persons by law enforcement officials.  Most of the allegations consisted of slaps, punches, kicks and blows with batons, inflicted upon arrest or during questioning by police officers….  In several cases, the delegation's doctors found that the allegations of ill-treatment by law enforcement officials were consistent with injuries displayed by the detained persons concerned.[209] 

Just as the CPT observed the lack of improvement in detention conditions and allegations of abuse of detainees between its 2005 and 2007 visits, Human Rights Watch also notes our own previous reporting on detention conditions in Greece.  In 2000, we visited the Attica General Police Directorate on Alexandras Avenue in Athens to monitor the conditions of detention for undocumented migrants who, at that time, were held there in a special detention center for foreigners.  Human Rights Watch found not only "severe overcrowding," but also that detainees were "deprived of exercise time, fresh air, adequate amounts of food, proper access to counsel, and proper access to physicians."[210]

Human Rights Watch is releasing a separate report, researched simultaneously with this one and entitled Left to Survive:  Protection Breakdown for Unaccompanied Children in Greece,[211] which further documents police violence against migrant children and ill-treatment of children in detention, including the failure to properly identify children and the detention of children together with adults.

While the failures of Greece in providing adequate sanitary conditions, health care, space, recreation, food, access to interpreters and legal counsel are woeful in many places, Human Rights Watch also recognizes and welcomes improvements, such as the closing of the old Samos facility, the renovations at Peplos and some accounts of improvements at Mitilini (which Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm). 

The closing of old migration detention facilities and the building of new ones indicates that Greece is not entirely unresponsive to criticisms of its treatment of migrants and asylum seekers in immigration detention, and that conditions do not appear to be inhuman and degrading in some locations, such as what Human Rights Watch was able to observe at the new Samos facility. 

Human Rights Watch also notes that Greece has both a three-month statutory limit on the duration of administrative detention for migrants pending expulsion[212] and, according to the refugee law passed after the Human Rights Watch visit, a two-month limit on the detention of asylum seekers who apply for asylum before the initiation of deportation procedures.[213]  On the positive side, these limits-in contrast to Turkey-provide detainees in Greece at least with some hope that they will be released.  However, since Greece usually does not carry out expulsions but rather releases migrants with a white paper notifying them to self deport, in practice migrants are rearrested and subjected to multiple detentions.  In the aggregate, this means they are held longer than these time limits. 

While Human Rights Watch, therefore, does not regard inhuman and degrading treatment as systemic in Greece, it is also not uncommon.  The risk of such treatment is particularly real at the airport where Dublin II returnees first arrive and in police stations in the border region where migrants from Turkey are often first apprehended and detained.  

Therefore, and in consideration of their own non-refoulement obligations, EU member and EU neighboring states that participate in the Dublin system should exercise the sovereignty clause of Dublin II and suspend transfers of asylum seekers to Greece.  They should choose to resume such transfers only when Greece shows that it has met EU standards for conditions of detention, police conduct, access to asylum and other forms of protection, and the fair exercise of asylum procedures, and when Greece stops its practice of forcibly returning non-nationals who would thereby face persecution, torture, or inhuman and degrading treatment in Turkey or their countries of origin.[214]