in Athens (Amigdaleza and Tavros) notify applicants of first instance decisions. In both cases, the inability of the applicants to understand the content of the communicated documents and the procedure has been reported. For those detained and due to the critically insufficient interpretation services provided in detention facilities, access to information is even more limited. According to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment (CPT)’s report to the Greek Government, foreign nationals detained in facilities across the country are deprived of their right to be informed about their rights in a language they could understand. According to the delegation, “a two-page information leaflet (Δ-33 form) detailing the rights of detained persons was generally available and pinned to the wall in various languages in most police stations visited, none of the persons interviewed by the CPT’s delegation had obtained a copy of it". Furthermore, the detainees complained that “they had signed documents in the Greek language without knowing their content and without having been provided with the assistance of an interpreter”.821 These findings remain valid in 2023. A delegation of the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) held talks with the Minister and Deputy Minister of Citizen Protection and senior officials responsible for prison matters in Athens on 23 and 24 October 2023 in light of the Committee’s decision in March 2022 to open the procedure which may lead to the adoption of a Public Statement under Article 10, paragraph 2, of the Convention regulating the CPT. A delegation of the CPT also carried out an ad hoc visit to Greece from 21 November to 1 December 2023 and the relevant report is pending to date. The same issue is raised in the subsequent CPT report published in November of 2020, in which the Committee refers to migrants held in the two cells in the Coastguard premises, who “were not even provided with the notification on detainees’ rights in a language they could understand”. Use of fellow detainees as interpreters is a practice that, according to the Committee, should be avoided. The delegation reports that ‘[…] access to a lawyer often remained theoretical and illusory for those who did not have the financial means to pay for the services of a lawyer. The provision of legal advice for issues related to detention and deportation was generally inadequate in all the detention places visited, including the Filakio RIC and the Filakio pre-departure centre. As a result, detainees’ ability to raise objections against their detention or deportation decisions or to lodge an appeal against their deportation was conditional on them being able to access a lawyer’.822 Similar observations were made by the Council of the European Union after the 2021 evaluation and its recommendations to the Greek Government that followed. 823 and were reported once again in a legal note issued in June 2022 by the NGO Refugee Support at the Aegean (RSA).824 821 822 823 824 CPT, Report to the Greek Government 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 28 March to 9 April 2019, CPT/Inf (2020) 15, April 2020, available at: https://bit.ly/3MDGG8Z, para. 100. CPT, Report to the Greek Government 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 13 to 17 of March 2020, CPT/Inf (2020) 36, Strasbourg, 19 November 2020, available at: https://bit.ly/3quLJ4r, paras 22 -23. Council of the European Union, Council Implementing Decision setting out a recommendation on addressing the deficiencies identified in the 2021 evaluation of Greece on the application of the Schengen acquis in the field of return, 9 November 2021, available at: https://bit.ly/3BVJWYB. RSA, Persisting systematic detention of asylum seekers in Greece, June 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/3qcFGkD. 170