separated detainees from the common area), they would have managed to escape and gone to the offices in the lower floors. In such a case, he would have gone to prison, he claimed. Therefore, in order to stop the detainees, the officers on duty opened the iron doors at which point the detainees attacked them with handmade weapons. ‘We received continuous physical attacks, with the obvious intention to push us back and escape’, Mr. Barbalias, one of the detention officers, was recorded saying. ‘We took our truncheons off their cases but we did not have to use them because the detainees…they slipped over and hurt themselves’, he claimed (court testimonies; See also Aggelidis, 2018).123 In contrast, the detainees’ account, supported by video footage taken from the camera situated just opposite the wing, reveals that at 7:06 am the detention officers angered by the demands and complaints of the detainees, unlocked the doors and within seconds, six of them took their truncheons off and started beating them, while pushing them back inside their rooms. For four minutes, the camera, which can only capture the entrance to the wing, shows other officers overlooking the direction of where the beating or ‘slipping over’ was taking place (dededado, 2018). Two of the detainees were so severely injured that they had to be transferred to hospital. Twelve hours later, the head of the Greek Police Aliens Directorate, Constantinos Louziotis, ordered the officers on duty to search for weapons in the detainees’ belongings. They found a lighter, which is allowed by the regime, and a door hinge. Nevertheless, a criminal case was built against the eight detainees, who participated in the ‘revolt’. Pending their trial, these men were transferred to eight different criminal prisons around the country in an obvious attempt to scatter them around to prevent any collective response. One year later, the trial, which took place in Athens over two days on 27 April and 23 May, was a farce. The three plaintiffs gave contradictory statements. While two of them could not recognise any of the defendants, the third one, despite testifying that they were all wearing full-face masks,124 recognised four of them. Similarly, while the first two admitted to have seen at least eight weapons in the detainees’ hands, the third one said he had not seen any. When challenged by the prosecutor over the video, which shows no escape attempt, they asserted that the video did not show what really happened. 123 124 These are extracts from testimonies given at court. In the video, the detainees are not wearing any masks. 183