meant that there was minimal preparation or strategic planning for the provision of services. The distance from the centre of Athens, where those detained had been living or had ties with, left them with very limited access to the outside world. Compounding matters, access was granted to a private lawyer offering services at grossly inflated rates, taking advantage of the lack of information offered to detainees. ‘Kyria (Ms) Maria’, as those detained referred to her, had extracted around 200 euros from each one of them for the submission of an asylum claim which was free of charge. After their first meeting, she disappeared and never picked up the phone. Men, who thought they were safe from deportation, found out months later, that their claim had never been registered.100 The ground was fertile for the intervention of humanitarian non-governmental organisations. The NGO Arogos, where I was working at the time, had locally established teams, comprised of doctors, social workers and psychologists, in all the detention centres in Athens. Following an unofficial agreement with the police, the NGO set up a screening process at Amygdaleza in order to select those more vulnerable and those needing urgent medical attention, as well as those who would voluntarily return to their countries. The NGO, in turn, hoped that this agreement with the police would act as leverage to attract more funding and officially establish a team at the centre. Despite the motives, or perhaps because of them, this registration process was executed in a shabby and shameful manner. Every day a delegation of NGO workers, psychologists and social workers (seconded from other detention centres), including myself, would arrive for the intake screening.101 We were instructed to finish this process as quickly as possible. We had been provided by the police with a container, where the officers would bring us detainees in dozens. They were lined up outside in scorching heat and without any protection from the sun waiting for their turn, while four or five of us sat inside in an airconditioned room with no desk in front of us; just the chair for those we were ‘screening’. NGO lawyers I have interviewed during my PhD research have confirmed they have also heard from detainees about the existence of this female lawyer. See also Schaub (2013) for another similar case documented at the Greek-Turkish borders. 101 These forms were three pages long and included demographic details, medical history, details about their time in Greece and reason for detention, as well as results from any psychological enquiry and further comments about their case (See Annex 2 for a translated version of this form). 100 152