14 THE DUBLIN II TRAP TRANSFERS OF ASYLUM-SEEKERS TO GREECE In its April 2008 position paper on “Dublin returnees” to Greece, UNHCR noted that: “[d]ue to the lack of sufficient asylum personnel to ensure the immediate identification, registration and processing of asylum applicants, ‘Dublin returnees’, including vulnerable individuals, are automatically detained, before their status is clarified and a decision taken to either interview the applicant or refer him/her to the Central Asylum Department”.44 On the basis of interviews with asylum-seekers carried out by Amnesty International in 2009, the situation does not appear to have changed since then, and the routine detention of Dublin II returnees continues to be reported. Many asylum-seekers interviewed told Amnesty International they were verbally abused while in detention, including two asylum-seekers who claimed that they had been ill-treated by police officers while held at the Athens airport detention facility. Interviewed asylum-seekers reported that one police officer in particular had violently pushed and verbally abused the detainees. M., an Iraqi national who claims that he belongs to the Christian minority, was transferred to Greece in mid2008, after he had applied for asylum in another EU country. He was detained at the airport immediately upon arrival, and told Amnesty International: “While I was speaking on the card phone with a friend, a police officer told me to stop talking, punched me and broke my tooth. He grabbed me violently by the hair and pushed me back into my cell.” Allegedly he complained to another officer about the incident but no action was taken by the authorities to investigate the incident. Another Afghan asylum-seeker told Amnesty International that he had been verbally abused, stripped and punched by police officers while in detention at the airport in late 2009. Incidents of ill-treatment by the police, including of detained asylum-seekers and migrants, have been documented in the past by Amnesty International,45 as well as by other organizations.46 Most recently, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed its concern about “reported cases of ill-treatment of asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants, including unaccompanied children”.47 During the October 2009 visit of Amnesty International representatives to the detention facility at Athens airport, the Greek police informed them that no medical examination is routinely carried out on asylum-seekers when they are detained but that medical care is provided, whenever necessary, either by a medical doctor or nurse at the airport, or in a hospital. It is to be noted that a medical unit providing health care for detained asylumseekers at the airport operated from October 2009 for a trial period of three months. According to information available to Amnesty International, this service is currently no longer provided. Prior to that, no such services existed, and medical care was provided only externally, in hospitals to which asylum-seekers could be transferred. If Dublin II returnees have severe health problems, the Greek police are usually informed of this by the authorities of the EU countries from which returnees have come. It appears that in some cases, asylumseekers suffering from severe illnesses have been less likely to be detained. In individual interviews with asylum-seekers who were not currently in detention, Amnesty International was told that during their detention at the airport they were not allowed by the police to have access to their medication, which was in their luggage.48 During the visit to the airport detention facility, Amnesty International observed that detained asylum-seekers or irregular migrants were held in conditions of severe overcrowding and that Amnesty International March 2010 Index: EUR 25/001/2010