26 GREECE IRREGULAR MIGRANTS AND ASYLUM-SEEKERS ROUTINELY DETAINED IN SUBSTANDARD CONDITIONS calling for the authorities to take steps in order to allow from the beginning access to the planned screening centres for NGOs and groups assisting migrants and refugees. Amnesty International believes that states should ensure that, if detention or any other limitation of freedom takes place, asylum-seekers and irregular migrants are granted access to legal counsel, free legal assistance, interpreters, refugee and migrant assisting organizations, members of their families, and religious and social assistance. Amnesty International believes that states should ensure that, while in detention, asylum-seekers and irregular migrants should be able to communicate freely and in full confidentiality with people who visit the places of detention and be given adequate opportunity to communicate with the outside world, subject to reasonable conditions to ensure security and good order in such places. 3.6. POLICE IRREGULARITIES During its research, Amnesty International has identified police irregularities in the determination of the detainees’ nationality and prior to transfers from one detention centre to another. Amnesty International has also identified irregularities in ordering release and in the handling of asylum applications of detained asylum-seekers. 3.6.1. IRREGULARITIES DURING DETENTION Concerns have been raised over reports of police authorities on the island of Samos recording arrested irregular migrants and possible asylum-seekers as having a different nationality from that declared by the migrants and asylum-seekers themselves, and not providing them with an effective opportunity to challenge these records. During a hunger strike that took place at the Samos immigration detention centre in April 2010, among other issues, the migrants raised concerns about the procedures that had been followed regarding the registration of their nationality. 91 The detainees also reported that they had been asked to sign papers in a language they did not understand. Amnesty International understands that the Greek police on the island of Samos are assisted in screening the nationality of apprehended irregular migrants and asylum-seekers by experts deployed by EU Member States in the framework of Frontex-coordinated joint operations.92 On the basis of interviews conducted with three individuals from a group of 10 Afghan irregular migrants and six Iranian asylum-seekers transferred from Samos to Athens on 14 January 2010, and from other reports received, Amnesty International is concerned that at least one of the 10 Afghans was registered as Iranian when his actual nationality was Afghan.93 A., an ethnic Hazara, arrived irregularly on the island of Samos on 10 December 2009. He presented himself voluntarily to the Vathi police station because he wished to seek protection and was automatically detained. During his detention, A. told Amnesty International that he was interviewed by an officer who spoke to him in Arabic and in English. On the basis of its own interview, Amnesty International concluded that A. spoke very little English. A. told the officer that he was from Afghanistan and was a minor. Nevertheless, A was registered as an Iranian and an adult.94 After a few days, A. was transferred to the Samos immigration detention centre. He told Amnesty International that, although he wanted to apply for asylum, no one informed him about asylum determination procedures, and neither did he see any information leaflet about this. Amnesty International July 2010 Index: EUR 25/002/2010