30 THE DUBLIN II TRAP TRANSFERS OF ASYLUM-SEEKERS TO GREECE 5. EXPULSIONS AND THE PRINCIPLE OF NON-REFOULEMENT Greece, as a state party to the Refugee Convention and its Protocol as well as other relevant instruments, including the ICCPR, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the ECHR must ensure that it does not breach the principle of non-refoulement.106 Greece is required to ensure that it does not send any individual, in any manner whatsoever, directly or indirectly, to a country where they face a risk of persecution or other serious human rights abuses. According to Article 5 of PD 90/2008, asylum-seekers have the right to stay in Greece and cannot be removed until the administrative procedure of the asylum claim has been completed. However, a number of organizations, such as UNHCR,107 Human Rights Watch,108 the GCR, Pro Asyl109, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee,110 other Greek nongovernmental organizations as well as media111 have reported the practice by the Greek authorities of expelling asylum-seekers to Turkey prior to their claim being determined in a fair and satisfactory asylum procedure.112 The sections above describe gaps and flaws at various stages of the asylum determination procedure, as well as administrative barriers resulting mainly from homelessness experienced by asylum-seekers and specifically by Dublin II returnees. Amnesty International is concerned that these failures by the Greek authorities to ensure that asylum-seekers have access to a full and fair asylum determination procedure is placing them at risk of refoulement. This risk affects Dublin II returnees in the same way as it affects asylum-seekers in general. In addition to these procedural failings, the practice of expelling individuals prior to effective consideration of claims to international protection create real risks of a breach of the principle of non-refoulement, either directly, or indirectly through onward or chain refoulement. Amnesty International has ongoing concerns about the situation of H.B., a person seeking asylum in Greece, whose case was first documented in a report published in 2005.113 H.B. is a Turkish citizen of Kurdish origin. Since 1994 he had been a member of an organization which is banned in Turkey, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (Devrimci Halk Kurtuluş Partisi-Cephesi, DHKP-C). He was convicted of membership of the above-mentioned organization and was imprisoned between 1995 and 2002 in various locations around Istanbul, some of which were high security “F-type” prisons. In an interview with representatives of Amnesty International in January 2005, H.B. said that he was tortured while in prison on various occasions and had gone on hunger strike in protest about the living conditions in prison. H.B. also suffered serious burns all over his body after setting himself alight in one of the clashes with the police authorities that followed the widespread protests by political prisoners of “F-Type” prisons across the country. H.B. provided evidence to support his asylum claim, including a medical report issued by the Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in Greece which confirmed that the physical symptoms noted by the Centre’s doctors were consistent with the type of torture he had described being subjected to in prison. H.B. also provided as evidence a series of media reports published at various times since 2001 documenting his political activities in Turkey, as well as a series of documents issued by the Turkish prison authorities and courts confirming his conviction for his Amnesty International March 2010 Index: EUR 25/001/2010