United Nations
General Assembly
A/HRC/16/52/Add.4
Distr.: General
21 April 2011
Original: English
Human Rights Council
Sixteenth session
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights,
including the right to development
Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred
Nowak
Addendum
Mission to Greece* **
Summary
This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Special Rapporteur on
torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak,
on his mission to Greece, from 10 to 20 October 2010. He expresses his deep appreciation
to the Government for the full cooperation extended by the authorities during the course of
the mission.
The Special Rapporteur understands the particularly overwhelming situation faced
by law enforcement officials in Greece, confronted with a major increase of irregular
migrants and refugees coming, mostly, via the land border with Turkey. Hundreds of aliens
enter the country irregularly every day and their systematic detention puts the border guard
stations, police stations, and migration detention centres in a situation of crisis.
The Special Rapporteur received numerous reports of ill-treatment by police
officers, in particular in premises of Criminal Investigation Departments (CID), some
amounting to torture in the sense of the Convention Against Torture (CAT) but with little
forensic evidence to corroborate the allegations. The lack of evidence may be explained by
the non-functioning system of police investigation and complaint mechanisms. This creates
* The summary of the present report is circulated in all official languages. The report itself,
contained in the annex to the summary, is circulated in the language of submission only.
The appendix is circulated as received.
** Late submission.
GE.11-12968