and absence of sleeping facilities, combined with the inordinate length of the period during which he was detained in such conditions, amounted to degrading treatment contrary to Article 3’ (Council of Europe-European Court of Human Rights, 2001, p. 9). This would not be a unique incident throughout this new era of the Greek detention regime. As has been documented by Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas Cheliotis (2018) in their analysis of Greece’s engagement with the European Convention of Human Rights, the state’s persistent failure to improve detention conditions would be subject to a long series of convictions, reports and outcries. In response to these kind of criticisms in May 2001, the Greek parliament adopted its first comprehensive immigration law, 2910/2001 ‘Entry and Residence of Aliens in the Territory of Greece. Acquisition of Greek citizenship by naturalisation and other provisions’ as a means to modernise and harmonise with the European framework. The main change brought by the new legislation was the transfer of immigration management from the Ministry of Public Order to the Ministry of Interior, i.e., from the Police to regional administrative organs. It also foresaw the establishment of a new Directorate of Aliens and Immigration. Yet, hopes that the rationale of the law would bring a new focus on issues, such as the humanitarian conditions of detention and the legal rights of migrants were short-lived. It was rather concentrated on a ‘short sighted regulation of migration’ through restrictions, as Anna Triandafyllidou comments (2009, p. 166). Nikolaos Sitaropoulos (2002b) further points out that the prevalence of the Greek police in immigration decision-making has indeed led to a one-sided view of immigration management, that of policing and deterrence at all costs. This, he adds is the ‘outcome of the persistent lack of specialised knowledge on the part of the competent decision-making authorities, which is compounded by an administration characterised by chronic centralisation and inefficiency’ (Sitaropoulos, 2002b, p. 1; see also Skordas, 2002). Law 2910/2001 imposed, for the first time, a three-month limit on detention of foreigners awaiting removal. The law also stipulated that detention orders can be the subject of judicial review and that appeals against removal orders entail their suspension. It also provided that foreigners are to be detained in the premises of the local police, until the regional Secretary General establishes special premises for that purpose (art. 48); thus, 76