overcrowding” and unsanitary conditions at the Kiprinos police station. It noted, “Such conditions could easily be described as inhuman and degrading.”162 The Kyprinou Facility in Fylakio Human Rights Watch was given a very controlled, guided tour of the Fylakio-Kyprinou detention facility. All the detainees were forced to stand in the yard outside the building during the Human Rights Watch visit. Human Rights Watch toured completely empty rooms. They were clean and neat. Each room had a copy of the five-language booklet “Basic Information for Asylum Seekers,” sitting on a carefully made bed. Although the detainees were made to stand out in the yard, it was a place completely without shade and also separated from volleyball and basketball courts, which stood empty. Since we were not allowed to talk with detainees at Fylakio-Kyprinou, but only to tour an empty, freshly scrubbed building, Human Rights Watch cannot make a proper assessment of conditions there. We note that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) reported that Fylakio-Kyprinou does not comply with the standards proposed by the CPT: “The new facility at Filakio consists of four large warehouse-type rooms with a proposed capacity of some 380 men, women, and children. The four rooms are packed with bunk-beds and, at full capacity, each detainee would only have about 2 m2 of personal space…. To sum up, the design is not appropriate for the needs.”163 We were able to interview former Fylakio-Kyprinou detainees, however, such as the 28year-old Iraqi from Baghdad, who told us about his experience in the Orestiada police stations,164 but who also spent three months in Fylakio-Kyprinou: Fylakio was crowded. There were about 360 people there. We were sometimes allowed outside in the morning and the evening for about 10 to 15 minutes each time. Some days we were not allowed outside at all. There is a place for volleyball and basketball, but I never played either in 162 Report to the Government of Greece on the visit to Greece carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 20 to 27 February 2007, Strasbourg, February 8, 2008, Council of Europe CPT/Inf(2008) 3, p. 15, para. 23. 163 Ibid., p. 17, para. 27. 164 See above, Border Police Stations . Stuck in a Revolving Door 70

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