three-month detention in Venna, he had to sleep on a cold, dirty floor during the winter of 2005 until he started coughing up blood. At first the guards wouldn’t take him to the hospital. He cut himself so they would take him, at which point he was treated for his respiratory problem. At the time of the interview he was living in Pendeli, a run-down makeshift Iraqi camp in the suburbs of Athens. The camp, which 10 years ago had been run by Doctors of the World, now has no electricity and receives no support from any social service agencies or charities. The young man talked with Human Rights Watch about his psychological state: I have tried to kill myself twice. Even now I consider suicide. This is not a life. I want to leave this country. I would prefer to go back and get killed in Iraq than live like this. I have been here for three years. I do day labor. I have no place to sleep even here in Pendeli. I sleep outside. I move from place to place. If I went for a red card, the police would arrest me. I paid 100 euros for a fake red card, but I was afraid to renew it. Now I have bad nerves. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. At the hospital the doctor told me to stop smoking, but I smoke three packs a day. I’m nervous. There’s nothing else to do.289 Among the undocumented Iraqis are people who at one time possessed a red card but who fell out of the system by having had their asylum claims rejected, having missed deadlines for renewal of the cards, having changed address and had their claims “interrupted,” or simply having lost their cards.290 The loss of the red card itself can have devastating consequences. Human Rights Watch interviewed an Iraqi man—an eight-year-resident of Greece—in the Edirne Tunca jail in Turkey who was summarily expelled after his red card was stolen: I lived in Greece for eight years, since March 2000. I speak good Greek. I had a red card that I renewed every six months. On June 5, 2008, after visiting a friend in Alexandroupolis, I was waiting in the bus station there waiting to return to Athens when the security police (Asfaleia) stopped me and asked for my ID. It was then that I discovered that my bag was stolen 289 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, B-40), Pendeli, June 2, 2008. 290 See above, “Tricks” to Knock Applicants Out of the Asylum Procedure. 107 Human Rights Watch November 2008