Report Alleges Systemic Illegal Detention of Migrants in Greek Police Stations

A report published by Border Criminologies, a research team based at the University of Oxford, alleges that Greece regularly uses prolonged detention of migrants in police station cells in violation of its own laws. 

The report gathered 31 testimonies of people held in police cells across Greece for weeks at a time. All the respondents reported unhygienic conditions, a lack of basic necessities such as blankets, an absence of information about their basic rights, and prohibition of communication with the outside world via their cell phones. Almost all respondents reported being subjected to police violence while in detention. 

According to Greek law, people should only be held in police stations in certain exceptional situations and for short periods of time. 

Greek law dictates that in regards to third-country nationals undergoing deportation procedures, that administrative “detention takes place, as a rule, in designated facilities,” such as pre-removal detention centers.There is a short-term exception provided in the law for detention in police stations if the person is deemed likely to flee or is a threat to public order prior to the issuance of their removal decision, though this decision in turn must be provided in a period of three days.

The other exception that allows detention in police stations relates to people in criminal procedures. Greek law stipulates that these people should be detained in correctional facilities, and can be held in police station cells only when transfer to such a facility is not immediately possible, and “should last only as long as is absolutely necessary.”

However the report found that over a quarter of respondents were held in police station cells for over two weeks, and another third were held for over a month. 

While in detention the respondents all detailed overcrowded conditions, little to no access to outdoor areas, lack of medical care, and dirty and pest-infested cells. One man detained in the General Police Directorate of Attica (GADA) reported being given unwashed blankets soaked with bodily fluids from previous detainees: “they [previously detained people] had cleaned their noses or peed on the blanket and the police would provide the same blanket for us, not a new one.” 

The report, conducted in collaboration with the watchdog group Greek NGO Mobile Info Team, and the Border Violence Monitoring Network, alleges that lack of food is a regular problem for those detained in police stations. Several respondents reported that they had not been given water for a period of two days. 

Both those held in police stations and lawyers reported that detainees are regularly denied access to communication with the outside world and with legal counsel. 

Almost all those interviewed for the report detailed some form of ill treatment, often including physical violence in the form of beatings. Beatings were detailed in police stations across the span of Greece, by respondents of various backgrounds.

“What we are seeing in police stations in Greece is not a series of isolated incidents but a pattern of systemic violence against migrants held in police custody,” stated Andriani Fili, co-director of Border Criminologies at the University of Oxford.

Two deaths of migrants detained in police stations in Greece hit headlines in the last year. On September 21 Mohammad Kamran Ashiq was reported dead in the central Athens Agios Panteleimonas police station. A full coroner’s report has still not been published, but photos were published of his deceased body covered with fresh bruises across his legs, arms, and back. The police stated that a “small-scale incident occurred with fellow inmates” and Ashiq was found dead the next morning. 

A few days later, a 29-year-old man, Khalis Miah, originally from Bangladesh, was reportedly found hanged in a crowded cell in a police station in Athens.

The Greek Ombudsman and the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture have both repeatedly decried the regular use of detention in police stations.

The 2019 inspection by the Greek Ombudsman’s National Preventive Mechanism Against Torture and Ill-Treatment  “reiterates its solid position that the use of police station cells for other purposes than criminal detention, such as long-term administrative detention, aggravates existing problems namely the absence of out-of-cell time, the lack of security, limited space and insufficient cleaning services.” In the 2020-2021 report the Ombudsman “reiterated its solid position that police cells are by definition unsuitable for the administrative detention of foreigners waiting for their deportation.”

In reports from 1997, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011 the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture raised concerns about the conditions of detention for irregular migrants in police stations in Greece. The committee stated that during their November 2023 visit to Greece they “again received several credible and consistent allegations of deliberate physical ill-treatment of detained foreign nationals by police officers in certain police stations in Athens,” and noted that several police stations were not suitable for detention over 24 hours.  

The Border Criminologies report states that the full number of people detained in police stations is opaque, as it is not systematically reported by the police, and decries what it calls a lack of transparency.