Greece

Country

Introduction: Immigration detention in Greece has been a central component of national border control apparatuses, particularly since the early 1990s. Whilst supposedly aimed at deterring irregular migration and securing Greece’s borders, these practices have led to a complex landscape marked by systemic human rights violations against people on the move.

Greece's immigration detention facilities have garnered widespread condemnation for their severe overcrowding and inhumane living conditions. Human rights organisations frequently report that these facilities lack essential services and amenities.

Numerous accounts document allegations of abuse by law enforcement within detainee facilities, with claims of physical violence, neglect, and humiliation coming from detainees, human rights monitors and activists. This culture of impunity complicates prospects for accountability, as complaints of misconduct by authorities are frequently ignored or dismissed. Oversight bodies, such as the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), have voiced serious concerns about the entrenched nature of these human rights violations, which stymie effective oversight. A significant impediment for detainees is the lack of awareness regarding their legal rights. Many individuals are not provided with adequate legal aid or interpretation services, which leads to confusion and a feeling of helplessness about their legal status.

Amidst these appalling conditions, detainees have expressed their resistance through organised protests, hunger strikes, and other forms of collective action, affirming their quest for dignity and recognition. Human rights NGOs and solidarity groups play a critical role in supporting these movements, amplifying the voices of affected individuals, and drawing attention to the injustices rampant within the detention system.

There is little official clarity over how many people are actually detained in Greece and the sites they are placed in. So, too, it is difficult to demarcate the detention estate. There are seven active pre-removal detention centres in Greece. Six centres on the mainland (Amygdaleza, Petrou Ralli, Corinth, Xanthi, Paranesti, Fylakio) and one on the islands in Kos. According to information provided by the Greek government, the total pre-removal detention capacity was 3,836 places by mid 2024. Foreign citizens are also detained in closed controlled centres on the islands, numerous police stations and other police buildings, like border guard stations. Throughout 2023, 24,174 detention orders were issued by the Hellenic Police. At the end of 2023, the total number of third country nationals detained in police stations or other facilities countrywide was 2,564. Furthermore, throughout 2022, the total number of unaccompanied children in administrative detention in Pre-Removal Detention Centres and police stations countrywide was 504.

Yet, there is more. In Evros, ad hoc facilities, mainly repurposed wheat warehouses, have been used over the years as spaces for detention. Research has also uncovered semi-official places, like the Poros Facility, which has been employed as an unofficial detention site prior to pushback operations, given the complete absence of any registration of detention. Testimony evidence collected by actors in the field suggests that detention in informal facilities prior to pushbacks is a common practice in the area. Researchers have also spoken about fenced yards, portacabins, warehouses, garages, and even animal pens.

The trajectory of immigration detention in Greece is concerning. The current right-wing government's rhetoric increasingly favours stringent control and punitive measures, raising alarms about proposals that may expand the scope and powers of the detention system. In light of these unfolding circumstances, documenting and addressing the realities behind bars is more urgent than ever.

Team: The database and the Greek country page draw on ongoing collaborative projects, between Border Criminologies, Mobile Info Team and the Border Violence Monitoring Network. The core team is supported by volunteers in Greece and the UK.

Mary Bosworth is a Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Criminology and Fellow of St Cross College at the University of Oxford and, concurrently, Professor of Criminology at Monash University in Australia. In Oxford, Mary directs Border Criminologies, an interdisciplinary research group focusing on the intersections between criminal justice and border control. Prof. Bosworth has published widely on immigration detention in a number of countries, including the UK, Greece, France, Hungary and Italy. She is currently conducting research into in-country detainee transportation and deportation. Prof. Bosworth 's research has been funded by the European Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the ESRC, the Nuffield Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, and the John Fell Fund. Mary is the UK Editor-in-Chief of Theoretical Criminology, a co-editor of Routledge Studies in Criminal Justice, Borders and Citizenship, and Clarendon Studies in Criminology at Oxford University Press.

Andriani Fili has been working on immigration detention in Greece since 2011, both as a researcher and as an NGO practitioner. Drawing together a large amount of empirical data, her PhD research explored the mechanisms through which the detention system in Greece has withstood harsh criticism and underpinned a continuum of institutional racism and harmful practices. Her current research project, funded by Wellcome Trust, explores the role and impact of health provision on people inside immigration detention centres and after release in Greece. Drawing on a range of sources of evidence, it further examines the continuity of experiences of medical care across and beyond these spaces and through time, tracing connections between zones of quarantine and confinement for those deemed undesirable in the country. In Greece she is also involved in counter-mapping activities of migrant containment spaces in collaboration with local civil society actors.

Manon Louis is an open source intelligence analyst focused on visual investigations and interdisciplinary research methods. She has worked extensively in field reporting, testimony collection and advocacy with the Border Violence Monitoring Network, and previously coordinated EU advocacy efforts for Mobile Info Team. Her work focuses on pushbacks, immigration detention and human rights violations at EU borders.

Alice T is a researcher working on state detention practices against racialised people in Greece and how these are resisted at an individual and community level.

Lena Karamanidou is the Research and Investigations Coordinator at Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), where she conducts research and coordinates projects on surveillance technologies and infrastructures, detention, and practices of border violence. She also conducts research on border regimes, infrastructures, and practices of control at the Greek-Turkish land border (Evros), including on local histories of detention and pushbacks through fieldwork and archival research. She has previously worked as an academic researcher. Her publications include From Exception to Extra-Legal Normality: Pushbacks and Racist State Violence against People Crossing the Greek–Turkish Land Border and Fundamental Rights, Accountability and Transparency in European Governance of Migration: The Case of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex.

Stergios Magkriotis is a researcher focused on immigration detention, everyday life in displacement, and care. He holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where he has taught on topics related to borders, asylum, and humanitarian interventions.

Phevos Simeonidis is an OSINT & audiovisual forensics researcher and an archivist. He is an MA graduate from the Centre for Research Architecture, a researcher and investigative partner of OmniaTv and The Manifold in Greece, and a PhD candidate at Durham University, SGIA.

Methodology: The content relating to detention in Greece draws on research our team members have been conducting since 2011, including interviews with detained women and staff in Petrou Ralli Pre-Removal Detention Centre in 2011, participant observation in detention facilities (2011-2012), a 5-year project (2015-2019) on formal and informal human rights monitoring processes in Greece, which involved visits to multiple sites of detention (Petrou Ralli PRDC, Amygdaleza PRDC, Kos PRDC, Athens Airport holding facility, and Elliniko-Argyroupoli police station), interviews with NGO workers, policy makers, charitable and volunteer workers, activists, and journalists (2018-2020), as well as a partnership between the members outlined above. Alongside interviews we draw extensively on secondary material including NGO and monitoring reports, media articles and social media content. All data uploaded to the platform undergoes a technical review process to verify the accuracy of resource usage and ensure correctness of information.

Testimonies and incidents published on the platform are collected through a consortium of field reporters and researchers who are members of various organisations in Greece and beyond. Testimony interviews are semi-structured, and designed to enable the conversation to be guided by the respondents' experiences. Interviews are conducted both over the phone and in-person, at community centres that provide specific services.

Deaths of foreign nationals in detention

The library contains records of deaths of foreign nationals in Greek police stations and immigration detention centres between 2000 and 2026. The inclusion criterion is that the individual was a foreign national in police or immigration detention at the relevant time, whether detained on immigration or criminal grounds. Deaths occurring within detention facilities, during transport to or from detention by police, or in hospital where the individual remained in police custody at the time of death are included. Deaths in prisons, open refugee camps, and deaths that occurred after release are excluded. A further gap exists in cases where individuals died in criminal prisons while awaiting deportation or transfer to immigration detention facilities. Cases involving individuals whose foreign nationality could not be established were also excluded.

Sources include Hellenic Police data on deaths of foreign nationals including suicides in police stations 2000-2024, overall deaths (including suicides) in police stations 2000-2024, deaths during/after transfer from detention to hospital 2012-2024, and deaths in pre-removal detention centres 2013-2024, obtained through two separate freedom of information (FOI) requests sent by researchers from the University of Oxford affiliated with the Detention Landscapes project to the Hellenic Police in October 2025. We also draw on data provided by the Hellenic Police to the European Council for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) pertaining to deaths of foreign nationals in detention in the years 2022-2025 (see Annex B11 in the Greek government’s response to the CPT here. Additional cases were identified through secondary sources, including media reports, activist statements and publications by NGOs and monitoring bodies including the CPT and the Greek Ombudsman, as well as a limited number of testimonies from detained people collected by researchers at the University of Oxford and the Border Violence Monitoring Network. Primary searching was conducted in Greek and English, with a supplementary multilingual search, corresponding to the nationalities represented in the recorded incidents.

A number of issues were identified in the data provided by police. Statistics on police station deaths and suicides and deaths during/after transfer to hospital were provided in aggregate form (by year and Police Directorate), without details such as the date and specific location of the death, making cross-referencing with other sources challenging. There were also inconsistencies between different datasets provided by police and unexplained anomalies (e.g. the 11 deaths in police stations recorded within the Piraeus Police Directorate during 2003 alone, for which we could not find any corroborating sources). Notably, police did not respond to follow-up requests for clarification on inconsistencies in the data. Following an intervention by the Greek Ombudsman, the police further refused to provide a more detailed breakdown on aggregate data, claiming that such a task would be an excessive bureaucratic burden.

Deaths are linked to the detention facility where individuals were held at the time of death; where an individual was transferred to hospital and died there, the record is linked to the detention facility rather than the hospital. For deaths recorded in official statistics by Police Directorate rather than by specific detention facility, entries are recorded without a link to a detention site. Causes and circumstances of death, including the presence of medical staff in the relevant detention facility, are recorded according to the available sources. In principle, medical staff are only present in Pre-Removal Detention Centres and not in police stations or other detention facilities. To reflect the temporary presence of medical teams at Pre-Removal Detention Centres during the day and the well-documented gaps in healthcare provision, their presence is recorded as limited in the relevant category.

The dataset should not be treated as a comprehensive record of all deaths of foreign nationals in Greek police and immigration detention during this period. It represents deaths identified through available sources. There are significant gaps and inconsistencies in police statistics, and documentation by media, civil society organisations, and other non-official sources is uneven across time and between cases. Many early-2000s newspaper reports, particularly in non-Greek languages, were never digitised or are poorly indexed online, meaning some deaths may exist only in print archives. Restricted access to detention facilities and limited independent monitoring also affect what can be established retrospectively. The dataset is updated as additional cases and new information are identified, and existing entries may be revised where new evidence clarifies or contradicts information previously available.

Funding streams & related projects: This database is built on Uwazi, an open-source solution for organising, analysing and publishing documents to make information more easily accessible. It was designed by HURIDOCS.

The research and database are funded by the ESRC-IAA, Open Society Foundations and the Wellcome Trust and have received ethical clearance from the University of Oxford’s Research Ethics Committee.

Additional funding includes a flexible grant for small groups award from the Independent Social Research Foundation to develop online 3D models of detention facilities, and the Law Faculty's Public Engagement Seed Fund towards translation costs.