by people inside the detention center, outside the center in Samos, and by migrants in Athens. A Palestinian man in Athens told Human Rights Watch: I was in there [in Samos] when they broke the Rwandan’s arm. They tell you to stand in rows of 10 on the basketball court. They counted us one time, then we left, then a second time, and we left, and then a third time about five minutes after the second count. On the third time, the Rwandan didn’t come. Maybe he didn’t understand. There was a new policeman who is not good, who had only been there for two days. He hit the Rwandan with a club and broke his arm. They took him to the hospital, and then brought him back. They released him on May 27, the same day as me.185 Lesvos/Mitilini Migrants and asylum seekers universally refer to Lesvos by the name of its main town where the detention center is located, Mitilini. Human Rights Watch was not granted permission to visit the center there, but many former detainees described it as being a big building like a warehouse converted into a jail with iron cells, each holding about 20 people with one dirty hole-in-the-floor toilet without water for sanitary purposes; detainees consistently describe the Mitilini jail as filthy and infested with fleas and other insects.186 A 28-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad gave this account of his 22 days in Mitilini: It was very dirty. The hair is not growing on this spot on my chin because I had a skin infection because that place in Mitilini was so dirty. The guards treated us like animals… It was the time of Ramadan and they were serving pork. When we complained about the pork, they told us they didn’t care. “If you don’t like the pork, why do you come here?” they said…. 185 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, B-33), Athens, June 1, 2008. 186 In addition to the interviews quoted here, Human Rights Watch interviewed others who had been held at the Mitilini detention facility who described it similarly. These include interviews B-7, B-8, B-9, B-15, B-24, B-27, B-44, S-113, S-114, S-116, S-117, S-121, S-124, S-125, S-126, S-127, S-129, S-135, S-136, S-138,and S-143. These testimonies confirm the description in “Migrants face ongoing humanitarian crisis in Mytilini,” Medecins Sans Frontieres press release, July 25, 2008, which says that “the inmates live in wards full of stagnant waters, with inadequate access to showers and latrines. There is only one functioning latrine per 100 people. The wards have not been cleaned properly during the last two months…The rule is that inmates stay locked in the wards without having even basic access to facilities that could ensure their personal hygiene and protect them from communicable diseases,” http://www.msf.gr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1848&Itemid=236 (accessed August 11, 2008) . Stuck in a Revolving Door 76