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Council of Europe group blasts Greece over prison abuses
Nov 17, 2010, 13:02 GMT
Strasbourg - Human rights experts for the Council of Europe sharply criticised Greece over police abuses against detainees, with a report saying the methods at times bordered on torture.
The Council of Europes Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) made the charges in a report from the group's fifth visit to Greece in September 2009.
In it, the CPT documented cases of detainees being punched, kicked, beaten with clubs and threatened with rape. In one case in Saloniki, police placed a plastic bag over a man's head and threatened to rape him, the report said.
The report documented what it described as catastrophic conditions in many prisons and expulsion centres, which were so overcrowded that refugees had the barest hygienic facilities.
A particularly negative example of one such expulsion centre was that located at Athens airport, which the European Human Rights Court recently cited in appealing to Austria, the Netherlands and Britain not to send any refugees back to Greece.
The CPT report also criticised Greece for largely ignoring previous human rights' experts warnings about police abuse in Greek detention facilities.
In a reply to the report, the Greek government rejected the allegaitons of serious abuse of detainees. In a 70-page report, Athens did say its system of expulsion centres was to be changed, but did not answer specific recommendations listed in the CPT report.
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