III. Arbitrary Deprivation of Liberty

[With the red card] you are supposed to move freely and the police [are supposed] to protect you. But they stop you and bring you for nothing to Allodapon.

— Omar, 27-year-old registered asylum seeker from Guinea, Athens, February 20, 2013

While stops can involve a relatively quick check of identity papers, we found that lawfully present migrants and registered asylum seekers are regularly subjected to lengthy procedures, both on the street and at police stations, that amount to unjustified deprivation of liberty. Many lawfully present migrants and registered asylum seekers interviewed for this report had regularly experienced being held by police officers in the street, confined in police buses, and detained in police stations and the Aliens Police Division for up to five hours. One person interviewed was held for approximately 10 hours, on one occasion.

Ministry of Public Order officials and representatives of police unions alike told us that the main reason for bringing persons holding proof of regular status to the police station and briefly detaining them is to verify the authenticity of the document.[99] “Yes, it is a practice. We don’t deny it. But it happens to those for whom there is a doubt about the authenticity of their documents,” Brigadier General Denekos told us.[100]

Spilios Kriketos from the Police Officers Union of Attica told us, “If someone has legal papers it is a double trouble to take him to the police station.” He explained that verification can happen by communicating the protocol number written on the document through the radio to persons at the police station who run the database. He added however: “There are thousands of cases of forged documents. When a police officer finds that something is wrong with the documents he will take the person to the police station and control him.” He stressed that this procedure wouldn’t take more than 10 or 20 minutes.[101]

Police officers told us it would be too time-consuming to verify the authenticity of documents in the street, especially during large-scale sweeps. However, it is unclear why radioing the central database containing the names and identifying numbers of people present in Greece lawfully, including of registered asylum seekers, would be more time-consuming than detaining and transferring people to the Aliens Police Division.

People often carry with them notarized copies of their valid documents for fear of losing the original document.[102] Officials at the Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection told us the police as a general rule do not accept notarized copies of identity documents, and cited this as a ground for bringing people to the police station for further verification of the identity.[103]

We spoke with 22 people, including a 16-year-old child, who told us they had proof of regular status in Greece when stopped by the police during Operation Xenios Zeus but were nonetheless held by police officers for further verification, many of them more than once. We spoke with 11 other foreigners with legal status in Greece who were not taken to the police station following an identity check. Neither of the two Greek citizens of African descent who have experienced a stop under Operation Xenios Zeus, were brought in for further verification.

Azizi, a twenty-six-year-old Afghan registered asylum seeker who lives near Viktoria Square in central Athens with his two children, aged three and seven, told us that in mid-November 2012 he was stopped by seven or eight police officers while out shopping. Even though he showed his asylum seeker’s card, he was detained and brought to the Aliens Police Division for further verification:

I explained to them that I have two kids at home and that I cannot leave them alone.… Because I couldn’t explain in Greek I just said, ‘Signomi, dio pedia spiti [Excuse me, two kids home],’ and they told me, ‘No, sit on the side.’ There were around 25 people.… At Allodapon they separated us. Those who had a pink card, they put us in one place. Others with ‘charti’ [an order to leave Greece] in another place. We left after 30 minutes … I was away for two-and-a-half hours. When I went home, my kids were crying so much.…[104]

Tupac, the 19-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker mentioned above, told Human Rights Watch that  after pulling him off a city bus for an identity check, the police held him for approximately six hours at Amerikis Square, along with a large group of Africans and Asians. He was then transferred to the Aliens Police Division, where he was held for approximately four more hours before finally being released in the early hours of the morning.

Abdel, a 25-year-old recognized refugee also from Afghanistan, described to us how in October 2012 he was transferred to the Aliens Police Division, even though he showed his proof of refugee status to police officers who asked for his papers at a control in Acharnon Street, central Athens:

They asked me, ‘Do you have papers?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I showed them everything, my passport, my work permit. I asked them why they stopped me and they told me, ‘You are going for a short ride.’ I waited with other people, Arabs, Pakistanis, and Afghans. We waited for 10, 15 minutes. Then, the police bus came. We were 27 or 28 people. We got out of the bus [at the Aliens Police Division], waited for 5 minutes and then a police officer asked me, ‘Do you have papers?’ I said ‘Yes,’ and he told me, ‘Fuge [Go].’ This thing has happened to me 8 times.[105]

Ali, a 33-year-old Afghan registered asylum seeker, told us how on April 2, 2013 his plans for a family picnic were thwarted when he was stopped by police officers near Attica metro station along with his 12-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son, and held for 5 hours before a Greek nongovernmental organization intervened for his release:

The police caught me.… The kids explained that ‘he is our father, he has a pink card, why did you catch him?’ They [the police] said that ‘we will take him to Allodapon, we will do the control and we will release him.’ Then the police told me to send the kids home … I said, ‘But we live in Piraeus, how are the kids going to go on their own?’ They told me, ‘We don’t care, tell them to go.’[106]

Ali’s children remained by his side while the officers took him to a police room located inside the Attica metro station where he found seven or eight more migrants. Ali remained there for approximately two hours while his children waited outside the room, and the police brought more and more people, “at the end there were forty-five [of us] … we couldn’t fit inside.”[107] His children were crying when he was taken out of the room along with everyone else for transfer to the Aghios Panteleimonas police station. When he complained, a police officer threatened to deport him to Afghanistan:[108]

I was really sad because he didn’t respect the children who were crying.… They brought us by foot to the police station and held us there at the hall on the ground floor. The kids were with me because I couldn’t let them on their own. One of the police officers from the police station took my pink card in order to check it in the computer but the police officer from the Attica metro station [the one who threatened them] said that ‘he needs to go to Allodapon.’… I asked, ‘What’s the problem [with my card]? It is valid. I renewed it fifteen days ago.’ They said that ‘there is no problem, we know it, but you need to go to Allodapon to check it.’[109]

Ali was only released after he was able to call a Greek nongovernmental organization which intervened on his behalf.

Haisham, a twenty-seven-year-old Syrian Kurd registered asylum seeker, said his last “visit” to the Aliens Police Division had occurred in mid-February 2013 when three uniformed police officers stopped him in downtown Athens. He was made to wait for thirty minutes on the street until a bus came to take him and around twenty others (“most of them blacks”) to the Aliens Police Division. He was detained there for approximately three hours before being released. Haisham told us the police had brought him to the Aliens Police Division five times in the previous six months.[110]

Sixteen-year-old Ruhallah M., a registered asylum seeker from Afghanistan, estimated that he had been taken to the Aliens Police Division seven or eight times in the two months since he arrived in Athens. “Every time it’s the same procedure” he said.[111]

Many complained about the poor procedure and the hassle they had to go through. Nazar, a 35-year-old Afghan registered asylum seeker, deplored: “Many times they have taken me to Allodapon, looked at my red card for two or three hours and then told me to leave.” And added that “[a]ll the time I’m thinking ‘Why they stop me? Because of my country?’ I have a red card. There is no problem to stop me and look at my paper, but why Allodapon?”[112]

Mamadou, a 33-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker, in Athens, Greece has been stopped by police numerous times and has been taken into police custody for verification of his papers on three occasions since the start of “Operation Xenios Zeus” in August 2012. © 2013 Human Rights Watch

Thirty-three-year-old Mamadou, a Guinean registered asylum seeker told us that he has been late to work three times in the last six months prior to our interview—once for three hours and twice for two hours—because he was held by police officers in the context of a stop. All three times he produced his asylum seeker’s card but was brought to Syntagma police station, Exarchia police station, and the Aliens Police Division respectively. “Thankfully people I’m working with are kind. I told them that I fall victim of an arbitrary arrest by the police and they understood.”[113]

Migrants and asylum seekers, including undocumented migrants, also told Human Rights Watch how they were brought to the Alien’s Police Division and released almost immediately upon arrival after what appeared to be a basic verification of their documents. This calls into question the assertion by police officers that the motive for transferring immigrants to the police station is the need for a sophisticated verification of their papers.

Franky, a 34-year-old registered asylum seeker from Togo, explained: “They catch you, take you to Allodapon, and as soon as you arrive they tell you, ‘Fuge, fuge [Go, go].’” Two months before our interview Franky was stopped with three Togolese friends, two undocumented and one asylum seeker, near Viktoria Square by police officers who first took them to a police station before transferring them to the Aliens Police Division. “Upon our arrival [to the Aliens Police Division], they told us to form two lines. They were telling us, ‘Show your papers,’ and if we showed it they were telling us, ‘Fuge, fuge [Go, go]’.”[114]

Abou, a 31-year-old Senegalese registered asylum seeker described a similar situation:

Upon arrival to Allodapon they took us out of the bus [police bus] and asked us to queue. We were fifty persons in total.… A police officer came from the office and said, ‘Show me your passports.’ We all showed our papers. When you show it they tell you, ‘Fuge spiti [Go home].’ [115]

The Right to Liberty

International and national law guarantee the right to personal liberty and security. To be lawful under international human rights law, the deprivation of liberty must be carried out in accordance with both formal and substantive rules of domestic and international law, including the principle of nondiscrimination, and be free from arbitrariness. Widespread detention of foreigners for hours for the purpose of verifying their legal status violates these provisions.

The Greek Constitution guarantees the inviolable right to personal liberty and clarifies that “no one shall be … arrested, imprisoned or otherwise confined except when and as the law provides.”[116] All persons in Greece enjoy this right “irrespective of nationality, race or language and of religious or political beliefs.”[117]

Under Greek law, police are authorized to bring anyone who fails to show proof of identity to a police station for further identity checks—a procedure known as “bringing a person in” (προσαγωγή).[118] Police also have the power to bring a person to a police station for further verification if their location, the time, circumstances, and behavior give reason to suspect that a criminal act has been committed or might be committed.[119]

This procedure normally involves remaining at the police station until someone can bring the detained person valid proof of their identity or the police can establish their identity by other means. According to the law, the time should be limited to what is strictly necessary to complete the procedure.[120]

A 2005 police circular defines this procedure as a restriction of the freedom of movement rather than deprivation of liberty “even if these controls may include going to the police station, where the controlled person is released upon completion, within reasonable time, of the control.” [121]

Human Rights Watch believes this interpretation is incorrect, and that the procedure involves deprivation of liberty within the meaning of article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 5 of the ECHR specifically enumerates the grounds which can justify a lawful deprivation of liberty. It includes the “arrest or detention of a person affected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offense.”

In the case Gillan and Quintin v. the UK, the European Court of Human Rights established that a range of criteria such as “the type, duration, effects and manner of implementation of the measure in question” must be taken into account when assessing whether a person has been deprived of their liberty. [122] In that case, which concerned two individuals stopped on the street under UK anti-terrorism legislation, the European Court of Human Rights concluded:

[A]lthough the length of time during which each applicant was stopped and searched did not in either case exceed 30 minutes, during this period the applicants were entirely deprived of any freedom of movement. They were obliged to remain where they were and submit to the search and if they had refused they would have been liable to arrest, detention at a police station and criminal charges. This element of coercion is indicative of a deprivation of liberty within the meaning of Article 5 § 1.[123]

The fact that taking people to police stations for further verification appears to be systematic for migrants and asylum seekers suggests the procedure is not based on a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Deputy Ombudsman for Human Rights Vasileios Karydis criticized Operation Xenios Zeus saying that “there is the problem of proportionality…. They are taking people in for questioning for all checks. It should be based on reasonable suspicion. It's a grey zone actually.”[124]

The European Court of Human Rights has emphasized that “[t]he requirement that the suspicion must be based on reasonable grounds forms an essential part of the safeguard against arbitrary arrest and detention.”[125]

The 2005 police circular requires that suspicion of criminal acts be based “exclusively on personalized evidence deriving from [the person’s] behavior,” and prohibits linking suspicion to “prejudices” based on color, ethnicity, and religion, among other grounds.[126] The circular further states that it is prohibited “to bring to a police station people, especially bound with handcuffs, while holding and producing an identity card, and when their previous behavior does not create suspicion or is not causally linked to the commission of crime.”[127]

The lack of training for officers participating in Operation Xenios Zeus appears to make deprivation of liberty the default procedure for many people. Police officers from the Hellenic Police Guards Union of Attica asserted that the lack of specialized training makes it more likely that police officers will detain someone for further verification.  Even representatives of the police union of Border Guards of Attica, who do receive more specialized training in immigration and asylum, told us that the asylum seeker’s card is a “semi-legal document” that requires further verification, while Greek and European law grants registered asylum seekers the right to free movement and the right to stay in the country until the asylum application has been examined.

Following a nine-day visit to Greece, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants said in December 2012 that he “regret[s] the ‘sweep operations’ in the context of operation “Xenios Zeus”, which have led to widespread detention of migrants in different parts of the country, many of whom have lived and worked in Greece for years.”[128] In January 2013, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention expressed similar concern, emphasizing “that any detention on discriminatory grounds constitutes arbitrary detention and furthermore, that detention without any legal basis also renders the detention arbitrary.”[129]

The widespread detention of foreigners for hours, for the ostensible purpose of verifying their legal status, documented in this report, violates the right to liberty. Police officials argue that the police do not have sufficient capacity or adequate equipment to verify the validity of identity documents on the street, particularly during large-scale sweeps. Yet authorities are failing to take steps that would permit on-the-spot verification of documents, including by putting in place the technical means allowing police to do so remotely and avoiding large-scale sweep operations. They are also refusing to accept notarized documents. Second, some of those brought to police stations are released almost as soon as they arrive, suggesting that verification of identity is not the intention of the stop. Detaining systematically migrants and asylum seekers from Asia and Africa presumed to be undocumented or to be using forged documents without a reasonable and individualized suspicion of wrongdoing, and on discriminatory grounds, constitutes arbitrary deprivation of liberty and violates national and international human rights law.