particularly aggressive police officers. This lack of trust on the part of NGO workers against detainees rendered mistreatment a non-issue or an issue that NGO workers had learned to brush off. ‘Violent incidents happened. We bore them, we restrained them and that’s it…the NGO didn’t want to be displeasing’ (Interview, Athens, 2018), a psychologist employed at one of the Athens detention centres disclosed. Indeed, the conception of the police as gatekeepers upon whom access to detainees depends, had forced NGO Arogos, and other NGOs active in the field, to become enmeshed and invested in maintaining webs of power and bureaucracy, which, consecutively, diverted energy and focus away from building an oppositional framework; thus, creating a secret solidarity between NGO practitioners and detention guards. The following example from my experience at the airport detention facility is illustrative of this secret solidarity. I started working at the airport detention centre in the wake of the landmark MSS v. Belgium and Greece case (2011), which held Greece responsible, inter alia, for violating Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights for the insalubrious living conditions inside the airport facility and ill-treatment by the police.110 Four months after the decision, on my first day there, my colleagues and I were witnesses to the same, if not worse, conditions that the country was convicted for. At the time, 120 men were detained in nine single occupancy cells with very little natural light and two toilets to share. ‘I wasn’t expecting what I saw. It’s like a butcher’s fridge. Cold and dark. I didn’t see any window, if there is one, it must be very small…The room is packed with people. They all sit and sleep on the floor.’ (Diary, Airport detention facility, 2012), I wrote in my notebook back in 2012. Their only physical movement was limited to going to the toilet in the morning and the evening. At all other times they were locked inside their cells. As I have noted elsewhere (Fili, 2013), other rules restrained them: they were not allowed to smoke more than three cigarettes a day, they were not given cutlery with their food for ‘security’ reasons and conditions of hygiene were never properly observed. During my time working there, I completed the intake of more than 950 detainees and held informal conversations with several detention officers. Allegations of abuse and ill-treatment were almost daily. MSS v Belgium and Greece (2011). You can also see ‘Dublin’s Trap: Another side of the Greek Crisis’ (Carter, 2012) for an account of the MSS decision and the events surrounding it. 110 162