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and controlled-access facilities, reception and identification facilities, and
official migrant and asylum-seeker camps.
Improvements: In accordance with a 2022 law, the government established
a legal remedy for complaints about detention conditions.
d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention
The constitution and laws prohibited arbitrary arrest and provided for the
right of any person to challenge the lawfulness of their arrest or detention in
court. The government generally observed these requirements. On January
25, opposition member of parliament Psychogios said the number of
administrative detainees in the preremoval detention in his district
increased 500 percent since 2019. He said authorities detained survivors of
an October 2022 shipwreck in Kythera for more than three months.
In September media announced an Afghan national convicted and
imprisoned for three years on allegations of human smuggling would receive
€16,000 ($17,280) as compensation for wrongful detention. The
ombudsperson, through the National Preventive Mechanism for the
Investigation of Arbitrary Incidents, received 210 complaints in 2022, most
about police insults to human integrity, health, or freedom. The
ombudsperson’s July report noted that despite fewer forced returns of
foreign nationals, the number of administrative detainees in preremoval
detention centers and police stations remained high. The ombudsperson
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2023
United States Department of State • Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor