Wednesday 31st May 2017 Nothing was out of the ordinary about that day. It was sunny, and as usual, it was hot. Inside the Petrou Ralli detention centre, the temperature always feels higher than outside due to its unhygienic sanitation. On hot days, especially, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the noise, the smell, and the dirt. As the CPT noted after a visit in 2015, the cells at Petrou Ralli, are filthy, stuffed and infested with cockroaches (CPT, 2016). The centre is located on the premises of the Attica Aliens Police Directorate and has been in use since 2005. It was rebranded as a pre-removal centre in 2016. While the ground floor hosts administrative offices in fairly good condition, nothing can prepare visitors for the grimness of the upstairs detention centre. There are two floors. The second floor is the male unit and the third floor, which was formerly a female and children’s unit, has been used to segregate detainees with severe medical issues, such as HIV and hepatitis. Upon the eviction of the female detention centre from Elliniko detention facility in 2017, women were again transferred to that floor. Around half past six that morning, men detained on the second floor of the facility, started huddling behind the very crude, basic looking bars that separated their cells from the common area that detention officers used. Most of them had been detained for more than seven months. They requested to see the director of the centre to ask about their cases and when they would be released, a common request as all the information handed to them is mainly in Greek. The officers refused to assist them. Detainees became agitated. They started pounding the iron doors speaking a confusing mix of languages. Iron doors slammed and the officers shouted at them. The men would not stop. By seven, the tension had risen but this did not seem unfamiliar to any of those present. As one of the lawyers I interviewed, so vividly stated, ‘even if the detainees do not admit to it, you feel the violence and tension the moment you enter Petrou Ralli. There is constant shouting’ (Interview, Athens, 2018). There are two versions of what followed next. According to official police records of the incident, an escape attempt was underway. The detainees were trying to break the iron doors which separated the area with one wing of cells from the rest of the detention compound. As the director of the centre explained to me, in an interview in 2019, the doors of the cells had been damaged by the detainees, so they could not be locked; hence they were free to move inside a limited area. If they had broken those iron doors (that 182