Key Recommendations

To the Government of Greece:

• Publicly condemn ethnic profiling by the police and other instances of discrimination and abuse by the police, send a clear and unambiguous message that such methods are unacceptable, and pledge to take concrete measures to document, analyze, and address these problems, including by holding abusers accountable;
• Provide clear guidance to police officers to limit deprivation of liberty in the context of an immigration stop, including the requirement that any deprivation of liberty, even for a brief period of time, must be based on a reasonable and individualized suspicion that a person’s identification documents are not authentic;
• Ensure, either in law or through binding circulars, clear guidelines for law enforcement officers with respect to immigration stops, including the permissible grounds for conducting a stop and for body pat-downs and the search of personal belongings;
• Ensure that each police patrol deployed for an immigration control operation has at least one officer, or a group of officers, with advanced specialized training in immigration and asylum issues, and on how to detect and identify forged documents;
• To avoid unjustified deprivation of liberty, develop and implement the necessary technical capacity to allow police patrols to check the validity of identity documents in the street.

To Regional and International Actors:

• The European Commission and Parliament as well as the EU Fundamental Rights Agency should monitor the Greek authorities continued implementation of Operation Xenios Zeus and hold Greece to its obligations under EU and international human rights law;
• The Council of Europe and United Nations human rights bodies should continue to exert pressure on Greece to address concerns about law enforcement discrimination and abuse, as well as arbitrary deprivation of liberty.