8. Lack of legal safeguards 2011, until October 7, access was once more denied to lawyers. During that summer, no legal aid was provided in Fylakio detention centre by GCR. Sometimes the GCR-lawyers were denied to meet even with detainees who had assigned them with a power of attorney. On the 6th of June 2011 access in that sense was also denied to the lawyer working for GCR in the Venna detention centre (in Rhodopi). She wasn’t even allowed to see her detainees, from whom she had an authorization letter conferring her right to represent them before the authorities. The lawyer asked to meet at least one of her clients, whose deadline to lodge an appeal against his negative asylum decision was finishing the next day. Initially the police asked to see the authorization, but even though she showed it to them, they denied access once more claiming it was an old one. 8.4.4. Access to the files The detainee has to grant lawyer a power of attorney in order to have access to his or her files. These authorizations have to be certified by the police. Sometimes the certification requires visiting police premises in two different locations, as the border guards are not authorised to do that. There are obstacles to accessing the files due to bureaucratic reasons or due to inadequacies of the system. For instance, for a single detainee, the police keep different files in different police stations. On account of improper record keeping, it is almost impossible for a lawyer to have access to information regarding the transfer of a detainee, his medical status etc. Additionally, sometimes the police arbitrarily deny access to the files. On the 14th of April 2011, the mission lawyers asked the border guard officers in Tychero to certify the authorizations given. The police denied doing so, thus, the lawyers could not access the files. In June 20, 2011 GCR lawyers requested from Orestiada’s Police Directorate copies of the deportation and detention orders issued against three female detainees in Fylakio. They had never been handed to them and since the women were allegedly victims and/or witnesses of sexual harassment by police guards in the detention centre (see chapter: violence) the lawyers wanted to lodge objections against their detention before Alexandroupoli’s Administrative Court. The Police Directorate denied access to the women’s files and only after the Public Prosecutor issued an order, they proceeded with the requested. Without 51 these papers, the application to the court is considered inadmissible. 8.4.5. Lack of a proper place to meet with the lawyers The lack of a room, where a lawyer can meet a detainee in confidence, circumscribes the detainees’ right to communication with his/her lawyer. During the missions, we met with detainees in corridors, in dirty rooms without chairs, behind the bars, and always closely observed by the police, who would never stay more than one or two metres distance from us. Under these circumstances, detainees who experience ill-treatment by the police are unlikely to report about these incidents to the lawyers. However, we have experienced a different situation in Fylakio, where we were sometimes granted access to the doctor’s examination room and other separate offices (such as the container in the yard). Another problem concerns the quality and quantity of time available to the lawyers and to the detainees. We often had to wait a long time before the officers would bring the detainees since they could not find them immediately in their database. That is, names are often wrongly registered or spelled. In addition, we had to wait for other procedures to be finished, i.e. serving lunch, visiting the doctors etc., because there were not enough guards to supervise parallel our meeting and the other activities. We frequently had to interrupt interviews and we could not always see all of those we wanted to. In all detention centres it is almost impossible to have a proper interview in a proper place with an asylum seeker about his/ her reasons of his/ her persecution. Under these conditions the communication between lawyer and detainees cannot be confidential and the legal representation is not effective. 8.4.6 Arbitrary denial of registration of documents There are cases in which the police arbitrarily denied registering official requests or documents that were necessary for the asylum, the detention and/or the deportation procedure. At Soufli border guard station, an Iraqi unaccompanied minor was wrongly registered as adult. He was in detention pending his readmission to Turkey. His family sent a fax to GCR in Athens, which then was forwarded to the police station. This document was a certificate proving his real age. Yet, it was never registered by the