span this era, there have, indeed, been a large number of allegations of ill-treatment. Most of the allegations consisted of slaps, punches, kicks and blows with batons (Amnesty International, 2010; CPT, 2006; 2008; 2010; Human Rights Watch, 2008; Medicins Sans Frontieres, 2010; Pro Asyl, 2007). In Mytilini special holding facility two persons claimed a senior police officer inflicted blows upon them with a wooden baton, following a hunger strike in early July 2005 (CPT, 2006). The CPT delegation found a baton, as described by the detainees, behind a chair in the guard’s room, which the guards explained was used only to ‘intimidate detainees’ (CPT, 2006, p. 31). People detained in police centres at the land border with Turkey, give details about this ‘intimidation.’ ‘The police treated us very badly. They kicked the food, they insulted us. They didn’t beat us hard. Sometimes they hit us with a baton. Other guards would watch the hitting, it was the normal thing.’ (Human Rights Watch, 2008, p. 69). Videos of police staff at the Omonoia police station in the centre of Athens forcefully slapping recently apprehended foreign nationals and beating them with a wooden baton, while others are filming, have also been disseminated.52 Law enforcement personnel have further been implicated in serious incidents of torture. 53 In 2001, a Turkish asylum seeker in coastguard detention was forced to undress and was raped with a truncheon by one of the officers present (Zontul v Greece, 2012). Following the initiation of disciplinary proceedings, the victim was not examined by a doctor and the incident was recorded as a ‘slight strike on the buttocks.’ The naval appeals tribunal imposed a suspended six- and five-months’ sentence to the two officers. The case was brought before the Strasbourg court, which found the investigation seriously flawed and punishment totally inappropriate (see more in Sitaropoulos, 2017). In fact, a reluctance to investigate allegations of ill-treatment by law enforcement officials was more often than not observed. In 2007 on the island of Chios two coast guard officers, tortured a Moroccan migrant by mock execution and ‘wet and dry submarino’ (simulation of drowning and suffocation) (ProAsyl, 2007). In 2013, the two officers were convicted to For the link of the video, see Perseus999 (2008). According to Sitaropoulos (2017), torture is problematically defined in Greek law. Torture was introduced into the criminal code (Article 137A§2) in 1984 by Law 1500. As defined in there torture is the ‘planned’ infliction by a state official on a person of severe physical, and other similar forms of, pain. Under the established Greek case law and doctrine in order for the infliction of pain to be considered as ‘planned’ it must be repeated and have a certain duration. This is clearly at variance with international human rights law standards, such as the Convention Against Torture, which Greece has fully transposed. 52 53 85