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The Special Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak said that 90% of the immigrants entered the European Union through Greece this year, mostly crossing the border with Turkey. In this connection, Mr. Nowak urged European countries to support Greece in order to succeed, first, to cope with the influx of 200-300 people a day and to provide the immigrants that has entered the country with normal conditions. He appealed to European countries to stop sending refugees to Greece following the Dublin II Regulation. In this regard, he put on the agenda the revision of the Dublin II Regulation so as to fairly allocate the burden of refugee protection across all European countries.

Mr. Nowak expressed his gratitude to the Greek government for inviting him on a ten-day mission during which he visited prisons and police stations without prior notice and talked with the detainees there. He said that 100% of the arrested in the police stations are foreigners and everywhere the cells are overcrowded, sometimes exceeding their capacity even three times. Because of very poor conditions in prisons, people get sick of respiratory diseases, skin diseases and have psychological problems.

Overall, foreigners in Greek prisons are 57% of the total. The capacity of the Greek prisons is 9 100 people but 12 100 people are serving their sentences or are awaiting to be sentenced. 6 899 of them are foreigners. A typical example of all rules and human rights violation is the prison at Elevterios Venizelos airport where there are nine cells for two detainees. At the time of Mr. Nowak’s visit there were clustered 88 people who use only two toilets and are forced to throw bottles of urine through the window.  
 
Greece is currently in crisis related to prisons, as the number of illegal immigrants coming across the border along the Maritsa river in Turkey has increased a lot. Immigrants are detained because they entered the country illegally but also for suspicions of a committed crime. In many cases, police authorities detain immigrants while awaiting their sending back to their homeland. And although most of the immigrants or refugees who receive documents are willing to travel to other European countries they stay in Greece after being released, noted Mr. Manfred Nowak. According to him, lack of any substantial social care leads to social isolation of foreigners and is the reason for the development of racial and xenophobe phenomena.

So far, the Greek system to control migration is based on systematic detention of undocumented immigrants and rarely any alternative solution is being considered. This leads to immigrants stay in prison for many months because they have no documents. Although legislative measures which the Government intends to undertake in the coming months are very encouraging, Greece should not bear the entire burden accepting the majority of undocumented emigrants entering the EU, said Mr. Nowak. He added that it is not enough to strengthen the protection of the EU external borders after the FRONTEX program. It is necessary to revise the Euro-policies on asylum and migration and to adopt a more equitable system to allocate the burden of unregulated migration across the member countries.

Many detainees have complained to the UN Special Rapporteur for being tortured but there is no forensic evidence about it. The lack of evidence can be explained by the non-functioning mechanism for police investigation but there is also great fear in detainees to talk about this or to give official statements. Mr. Nowak pointed out that it is necessary a service to be formed independent of the Ministry of Citizens Protection and the police to investigate allegations of torture cases. It should be noted that according to statistics, only one policeman out of 238 accused in poor performance of duties was removed in the 2003 – 2007 period.  

Conditions in prisons and police stations are generally bad. They are mostly overcrowded, dirty, with poor lighting and without ventilation. There are no open areas for the detainees to walk. Moreover, detained minors are in the same cells together with the others which violates their rights. Those who expect their case before the court are also together with the others convicted. The problem with the overcrowded Greek prisons is that the system of justice is slow and many prisoners who do not know Greek are not entitled to free interpreter, but also they do not know why they were detained and how long they will stay in prison.
 
Mr. Manfred Nowak recommended the Greek government to cope with prison overcrowding, to decriminalize certain offenses under the law, mostly drug-related convictions, and to introduce sentence remission and apply other forms of punishment with no need of detainment. Furthermore, the system of justice should be reformed so as to guarantee the defendants a fair trial shortly after their arrest. Mr. Nowak has also recommended the Ministry of Health to take the responsibility for the treatment of detainees. The UN Special Rapporteur urged Greece to ratify and implement the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) and develop an independent prevention mechanism for visiting detention facilities without notice. Another important element in the recommendations to the Greek government is the proposed reform of the system issuing documents for refugees so as to become more effective.