Statement:
Torture committee publishes damning report on Greek immigration detention centres
19th July 2024
In February 2023, Mobile Info Team called on the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) to carry out a country visit to Greece, paying particular attention to pre-removal detention facilities which had not been visited for more than five years. We are pleased that the CPT carried out a visit in late 2023 and recently published its damning follow up report, highlighting widespread and ongoing violations inside Greek immigration detention centres.
On 12th July 2024, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) published a report following an ad hoc visit to detention facilities in Greece between 21st November and 1st December 2023. The visit was conducted eight months after the publication of Mobile Info Team’s report, Prison for Papers, which documented appalling living conditions across the mainland’s pre-removal detention centres.
We are reassured to see a number of our own findings reflected in the Committee’s report. Sadly, most of the issues raised during 2016, 2018 and 2020 visits by the CPT persisted, including the carceral design of pre-removal facilities, insufficient healthcare provided, lack of qualified personnel, and dilapidated and poorly maintained accommodation structures. Concerningly, the CPT delegation met many people who self-identified as unaccompanied children who were held in inappropriate conditions in detention without support.
“In several centres sanitary facilities were in a poor state of maintenance [...] Much of the accommodation areas were infested with cockroaches and bed bugs. Several centres did not regularly provide heating and warm water.” (CPT report - July 2024)
In particular, we are pleased at the report’s emphasis on appalling conditions at Corinth PRDC, which was last visited by the CPT in 2015. In this latest report, conditions at Corinth are singled out as particularly catastrophic, with tuberculosis spreading among the population and one person dying as a result of severe pneumonia. At the time of the Committee’s visit, there was just one doctor for 654 detainees at Corinth.
The CPT delegation also reports receiving “several credible and consistent allegations of deliberate physical ill-treatment of detained foreign nationals by police officers” in specific police stations and pre-removal centres. Reports of ill-treatment included accounts of “blows with batons and the butt of a rifle, kicks, punches and/or slaps”.
However, we note that Amygdaleza PRDC - the detention centre with the largest population on the mainland - was not visited by the Committee, despite serious and ongoing human rights violations including severe physical violence amounting to torture documented at the facility. Concerningly, the last visit to Amygdaleza by the CPT was in 2018.
Read the latest CPT report on immigration detention conditions in Greece here.
Read the response of the authorities here.
Read MIT’s report and statement on conditions in pre-removal detention centres.
Access the Detention Landscapes project documenting testimonies, incident reports and visual evidence of conditions inside detention centres in Greece here.