Komotini pre-removal centre in November 2012, detainees were made to stand in the corridor outside their dormitories while riot police officers had proceeded to hit them with batons and chains. The beatings continued for two days. As a result, 25 detainees had to be transferred to hospital for treatment for broken limbs. Yet, the police report indicates that prohibited items had been found during the search and criminal charges were brought against the instigators of the unrest. No investigations into allegations of ill treatment by police officers was initiated (CPT, 2014). Despite the detailed, coherent and consistent allegations of ill treatment, often amounting to torture, few detainees ever filed complaints against the police, fearing retribution or a negative impact on their case. The decision not to file complaints was often supported by the detainees’ lawyers, aware of the state of impunity covering the police force. Foreigners who did not have a lawyer were in a worse position, as they were unaware of their rights and possibilities to pursue such a claim. Even those who filed a complaint, a complex procedure, that required legal advice and interpretation services, admitted that there was no follow-up action by a prosecutor or a judge, raising questions about the independence of the investigative authorities and leaving many in doubt about the commitment of the state authorities to combat this phenomenon. In fact, the complete inaction from a political level means that officers could act in the knowledge that they would not be held to account if they physically ill-treated a detained person. Interactions with high officials were revealing for that matter. According to a journalist I interviewed, the General Secretary of the right-wing governing party, when visited by the Greek Committee for Human Rights, blatantly admitted that they were not interested in human rights. On the eve of 2015, there were nine pre-removal detention centres, two screening centres in Samos and Chios in the Aegean, two first reception centres in Orestiada; one on the land border with Turkey and one on Lesvos at the sea border with Turkey, in addition to a number of border guards and police stations, with a known capacity for around 5,000 (Majcher and Flynn, 2014). The general immigration policy as well as the situation in detention had created an outrage. Humanitarian NGOs, political parties and news media outlets on the left of the political spectrum expressed their concern about what was going on behind iron doors, however, in the context of public xenophobia, they had failed to reach beyond their own circles. One cannot but note a sharp contrast between the amount of resources and political emphasis given to building detention centres in Greece, and the 111