not merely a matter of training. The judiciary is prejudiced against immigrants. They think it’s normal for someone to be detained because they are undocumented.’ (Interview, Athens, 2018). According to Cleo Papapantoleon (2014) the general and indiscriminate subjection of foreigners to inhuman and degrading treatment in detention centres is, after all, supported by the refusal of all administrative courts in the country to temporarily grant legal remedies against detention. Yet, even when judges seem to be standing against detention at all costs, as in the case of the local court in Igoumenitsa, which dismissed criminal charges against 15 people who had escaped from long-term detention in police cells because this was interpreted as a reasonable act given the conditions they were exposed to, they are excluded from mainstream circles. As a member of an international human rights organisation revealed to me about the judge in Igoumenitsa, he was unfavourably transferred to a remote location in Greece. For as she concluded ‘Who would dare to make such a decision?’ (Interview, Athens, 2018). The above leave little room for hope that justice can be brought for those detained. Indeed, lawyers’ limiting belief in systematic change is deeply-rooted. Evgenia’s statement, who has years of experience in representing immigrants at court, when I asked her about available legal actions, is revealing ‘I don’t think there is a mechanism that is able to change the way the police work. They are somewhat autonomous and only interventions from very high up can bring change. Whatever the rest do is just beating the air’ (Interview, Athens, 2018). Against this context, litigation against detention conditions and harmful practices at a European level has been employed as a means to document injustices inside detention and to gain leverage in any extrajudicial domestic negotiations as the authoritativeness of the European Court and its judgments provided increased legitimacy to advocates. Successful litigation, in turn, triggered a wave of new applications. Therefore, in line with Dia Anagnostou and Alina Mungiou-Pippidi (2014), despite this legal work bringing human rights abuses to light and the growing consensus about the need to rectify the situation, the extent to which this has brought tangible results in human rights protection inside detention is not so evident (see also Anagnostou, 2014). As with litigation at the EU level, the power of international organisations operating at the domestic level, like the MSF and UNHCR, to dictate the direction of legal and structural reform is strained. The relationship between these organisations and the authorities is key in understanding the scope and challenges of monitoring operations and the reports that are published as a result of those. As a member of an international human rights institution 136