Out of the spotlight: The rights of foreigners and minorities are still a grey area number of threats. Instead, the organization learnt that two of these victims, Tatiana A. and Kamelia P., have had deportation orders issued against them while trial proceedings were still on-going. The organization notes that while Law 3064/2002 allows for the suspension of such deportation orders by order of the Misdemeanours Prosecutor and approval by the Appeals Prosecutor (Article 12.2), such deportations are not unequivocally prohibited. The organization also expressed concern about the time taken to try cases against persons suspected of involvement in trafficking and the compatibility of this legislation (Law 3064/2002) with legal provisions about statutory limitation. The case of the two trafficking victims mentioned above, Gina M. and Kamelia P., who were minors at the time when the offences were allegedly committed in 1998, was heard by the court in December 2004. By that time, the charges against those suspected of having committed offences of pimping and pandering had been dropped because of the five-year lapse (ruling Ref. No 2252/2203 of the Appeals Council of Athens). Keeping in mind concerns that the organization has previously raised about the length of judicial proceedings in Greece, the organization is concerned that such limitations may hinder access to justice of trafficked victims. In the case of Olga B., the organization had expressed concerns in 2003 and 2004 about the repeated failures of the court to call the complainant to testify in the trial against a police officer she had accused of raping her in 1998, while she was working in a bar. At the initial stage of the trial, two persons were convicted for trafficking and procurement in 2003 in relation to the victim’s claims, and the police officer was given a two-year suspended sentence for breach of duty for failing to report his knowledge of the trafficking offences. He was eventually acquitted of the rape charges in 2004, in a trial that the complainant attended, Amnesty International 5 October 2005 34 on the grounds that the victim had consented to sexual intercourse. 63 Reports were also received concerning the trafficking of children and the state’s failure to ensure their protection. In particular, Amnesty International expressed concern about the disappearance of 502 children, the vast majority of whom (i.e. at least 457) were foreign, from a state institution that had been charged with their protection. The organization received reports that despite the announcement in 1998 of a programme to protect the rights of street children, 502 children, who had been accommodated in the Aghia Varvara institution in Athens within the framework of a children’s protection programme, went missing between 1998 and 2002.64 Most of the children were Albanian Roma, who were forced by traffickers to work by begging and selling trinkets on the street. The children had been taken to the Aghia Varvara institution by security police. In March 2004 the Greek Ombudsman issued a report that identified a number of gaps in the design and implementation of the child protection programme, which had resulted in the disappearance of the children. 65 Specifically, 63 Greece: Amnesty International calls for re-trial of police officer acquitted of alleged rape of a Ukrainian woman (AI Index: EUR 25/006/2003) and entries in Europe and Central Asia: Summary of Amnesty International' s Concerns in the Region January - June 2004 (AI Index: EUR 01/005/2004), Europe and Central Asia: Concerns in Europe and Central Asia: July - December 2003 (AI Index: EUR 01/001/2004) as well as entries in Amnesty International Reports 2004 and 2005. 64 These reports were initially publicized by the international NGO ‘Terres des Hommes’ in 2003 (The trafficking of Albanian children in Greece, January 2003). The claims made in this publication, were subsequently investigated by the Greek Ombudsman and the findings published in a report in March 2004. 65 $ : ‘ * + ( ,! ’ [Implementation of the Programme ‘Protection and Social Care for the Street Children’] Report by George Moschos, Olga Themeli, Stamatina Poulou AI Index: EUR 25/016/2005