within 30 days. It is also usual practice to detain asylum seekers, which is contrary to the law. It seems that this practice is used by the authorities as a dissuasive measure to prevent immigrants from applying for asylum in Greece. There are several cases where immigrants coming from countries where return is impossible are kept in detention for months and in the end they are either released with a notification to leave the country within a certain period of time (usually 30 days) or even deported.33 According to the UN working group the lack of any effective judicial review leads to arbitrary detention of individuals. This, in combination with the duration of the detention and the very bad detention conditions, can be considered a punishment of a person that has not committed any crime and accordingly a serious violation of the principle of proportionality. It should be noticed that recently the Greek police have started a “sweep operation” called “Xenios Zeus” that has lead to the detention of a great number of immigrants. Among these immigrants there were also people that have been living and working in Greece for years. As the UN working group has noticed in most of the cases “the conditions fall far below international human rights standards”. Great criticism has been made against Greece on this issue and the State has been held liable several times. Reports against Greece have been issued by the Special Rapporteur of UN on Torture and other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment34, by the Fundamental Rights Agency of EU35 and especially the public statement against Greece issued by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on March 2011. This measure is used only as a last resort against a country and it has been used only five times for Turkey (1992, 1996) and for Russia as to the situation in Chechnya (2001, 2003, and 2007). In most cases, the detainees are kept for months in facilities that should be used only for temporary detention and for a much smaller number of persons. There is also no separation among detainees under administrative deportation, asylum seekers and common criminals. In addition, there is no separation between pre-trial detainees and convicted detainees, and it is 33 Stiftung PRO ASYL, Greek Council for Refugees, Infomobile, Walls of Shame, ACCOUNTS FROM THE INSIDE: THE DETENTION CENTRES OF EVROS 34 Report Submitted by the Special Rapporteur of UN on Torture and other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Manfred Nowak: Mission to Greece, A/HRC/16/52/add. 4 (March 2011) 35 Fundamental Rights Agency, Coping with a Fundamenta Rights Emergency: The Situation of Persons Crossing the Greek Land Border in an irregular Manner (8 March 2011)