detained on Chios Island in filthy, overcrowded conditions.220 He gave two reasons for not applying for asylum in Chios. First, he claimed that he was a Palestinian, not an Iraqi. “I told them I was Palestinian because I thought they would send me back to Zakho in northern Iraq and from there I would be sent back to Baghdad. We heard that the government of Iraq was paying Turkey to send people back.” The second reason he did not want to apply for asylum was because of the horrible conditions in which the Greeks detained him. He said, “No one wanted to claim asylum. The wood house where I was detained made me sick. The blankets were covered with lice, I slept in shit. I got scabies.”221 An Iraqi detainee held at the old Samos facility in March 2007 said that he never saw the asylum booklet in Samos or had any idea about how to apply for asylum. On the advice of his smuggler who told him that Iraqis would be detained for three months and deported but Afghans would be held for one week and released, he falsely claimed to be an Afghan. With regard to asylum at the old Samos facility, he said: There was no interview. They asked nothing about Afghanistan. They had no interpreters for Afghans, but they had no interpreters for Arabic either. They didn’t tell us how long they would hold us there. They just released me after 15 days and gave me a paper that was in Greek that I couldn’t understand. When I was taking the ferry from Samos to Greece I asked some Greek girls who spoke English to translate it for me. That’s when I found out that I had 30 days to leave the country.222 The Chief of Police on Samos, Ioannis Kotsampasis, acknowledged that very few detainees seek asylum at Samos, but said that those who don’t ask for asylum immediately are detained for the maximum three-month period. This suggests that detention is being used as a deterrent for those who are regarded as lodging frivolous claims: We give out a pamphlet that explains their rights in several languages…, but they don’t come from war countries. We don’t see war injuries. They 220 See above, Chios. 221 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, B-3), Athens, May 23, 2008. 222 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, B-2), Athens, May 23, 2008. Stuck in a Revolving Door 88