merely the inevitable outcome of an escape attempt or a revolt. Police abuse in these cases is the norm. In 2013, following a series of abuses (CPT, 2013; see more in Flashnews.gr, 2013) including the death of one man, Mohamad Hassan, of an infection which had been ignored for months, and the announcement of their detention extended from 12 to 18 months, immigrants detained at the Amygdaleza detention centre, refused to be locked back in their rooms and set fire to their bedding. The riots soon escalated in the Amygdaleza detention centre and clashes broke out between the police and the detainees. Once again strong-arm policing was the only credible response. Greek riot police were deployed to forcefully end the riot, during which ten people managed to escape. As a punishment, detainees were not allowed out of their rooms for days and 65 detainees allegedly responsible for the riot were charged with felony crimes (riot, attempted escape, violent physical injuries and attacks to guards, unprovoked damage of property and insult of officials) and sent to prison.128 Yet, these charges seem to have been manufactured by the police officers present, who produced almost identical written accounts of what happened and identified those responsible amongst 750 people, in the dark and despite being hundreds of metres away from them (Aggelidis, 2014a; 2014b; 2014c). According to the police, the riot was an entirely illegitimate reaction, evidencing the herd-like nature of participants and pathological immorality or even criminality of the participants (See Epirus TV News, 2013) and someone had to be punished for that.129 As Lucy Fiske has shown, naming an event a riot is a pejorative exercise ‘implicitly carrying a swathe of value judgements about the nature of the act(s), its legitimacy, the character of those involved, and its generalised threat to society’ (2014, p. 384). Riots in detention, though, have also been used by the police as an alibi for maintaining poor conditions in the centres; thus, using resistance as a rhetorical defense mechanism against continued criticisms about the excessive use and deplorable conditions of immigration detention in Greece and absolving them of the responsibility to act upon these criticisms. ‘You know, they are smashing chairs now and afterwards they are going to complain about the lack of furniture’ (Diary, 2012), a detention officer commented cynically at the For an analysis of the trial see Rozakou (2017b). The defendants stayed in prison for 15 months, after having been detained for more than 10 months inside Amygdaleza before that. They were found not guilty by the court, which found the accusations misguided and defective. 128 129 185