of RIC Malakasa opened on 2 December 2024 in the morning and closed again at the end of the same day. ELIL noted that Farsi speakers have managed to get appointments for Malakasa, while Arabic and Pashto speakers have not succeeded. In one case due to the platform being down, Equal Rights Beyond Borders wrote to the two RICs and RIC Diavata requested the person to come for registration. 691 As further noted in the aforementioned 2023 report by RLS & MIT: Under the new procedure […] at one of two RICs on the Greek mainland, […] applicants are unable to exit the facility for a maximum of 25 days while they undergo screening consisting of a police interview, medical check, vulnerability assessment, and the registration of an asylum claim […]. Restriction of movement is applied as a blanket measure […] including (to) vulnerable persons […] meaning that people with a disability, pregnant women, victims of human trafficking, people with serious illnesses and torture survivors, among others, are subjected to de facto detention within the RICs for periods up to 25 days (and in practice possibly longer). […] assessment of vulnerability within the screening procedure is inadequate […]. 692 According to the law, when indications or claims of past persecution or serious harm arise (i.e., torture survivors), the Asylum Service has to refer the applicant to a medical and/or psychosocial examination, which should be conducted free of charge and by qualified, specialised personnel. Alternatively, the applicant must be informed that they can undergo such examinations at their own initiative and expense.693 Article 77(2) of the Asylum Code provides that ‘[a]ny results and reports of such examinations are deemed as justified by the Asylum Service where it is established that the applicant’s allegations of persecution or serious harm are likely to be well-founded’. However, there are still no public health structures specialised in identifying or assisting torture survivors in their rehabilitation process. As a result, it is for the NGOs running relatively specialised programmes, to handle the identification and rehabilitation of victims of torture. This is rather problematic for reasons that concern the sustainability of the system, as NGOs’ funding is often interrupted. In Athens, torture survivors were referred for identification purposes to the NGO METAdrasi in the context of its programme “Hope and Memory: Identification and Certification of Victims of Torture”694. However, the programme ended at the end of 2023. According to a report of FENIX of April 2023 regarding identification and certification of victims of torture: practice over the years has demonstrated serious deficiencies in the identification and certification of victims of torture of applicants in Greece […]. Additionally, structural deficiencies are also observed in the specific process to certify VoTs, namely due to restrictive legislation limiting only public authorities to provide certification for VoTs in accordance with the Istanbul Protocol, whilst national authorities and bodies do not have the qualification or training and lack of interpretation to proceed with this certification. At the same time, non-governmental organisations, namely Metadrasi, hold the appropriate expertise to provide certification for VoTs according to the Istanbul Protocol […] Nonetheless, […] the VoT certification provided by NGOs may be taken into consideration by asylum authorities for the purposes of the asylum procedure, but it is at the discretion of each decision maker […].695 Also, according to Article 62(5) of the Asylum Code “[i]n case the competent Authorities identify victims of human trafficking, they are obliged to inform the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for the identification and referral of victims of Human Trafficking as soon as possible 696 in accordance with Articles 76 and 79 L. 4781/2021”. 691 692 693 694 695 696 Information obtained during Legal Aid Working Group meeting of 4 December 2024 Refugee Legal Support / Mobile Info Team, Protection Unavailable: Dysfunctional Practices and Restrictions on the Right to Asylum Assessing the implementation of reception and identification procedures on mainland Greece, November 2023, p. 32 et al., available at: https://tinyurl.com/yrsjp5xa. Article 77(3) Asylum Code. METAdrasi, Hope and Memory: Identification and certification of victims of torture, available at: https://bit.ly/3JQEFFP. FENIX – Humanitarian Legal Aid, Unrecognised Vulnerability- Greece’s systematic failure to identify and certify Victims of Torture, pp. 6-7, available at: https://tinyurl.com/mwpxajcv. Office of The National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings, web page, available at: https://bit.ly/3T60ZRw. 140