Deaths in police custody: Greece’s police is hiding the facts

Nikos Sambanis, Kostas Fragoulis, Kostas Manioudakis, Vassilis Magos, Zac Kostopoulos. These were perhaps the five highest-profile murder cases overseen by the Hellenic Police (Greece’s national police department) in recent years. Much less attention – indeed sometimes none at all – has been given to the dozens of individuals who died at the hands of the Greek police itself during that period. The deaths in question happened either during a police operation or inside detention facilities. The exact causes apparently included torture and withheld medical care, alongside “natural causes” and (perhaps induced) suicide.

A 43-year-old man of Greek origin was found dead on 4 March 2025 at the police station in Peristeri (an Athens suburb). He was arrested the day before for an incident of domestic violence. An on-duty police officer subsequently visited him in his cell and found him to be in good health, but half an hour later the detainee was discovered dead. An investigation was ordered. It was the third death of a prisoner in Greece in 2025.

On Sunday 2 February, at a police station of Kos, a 34-year-old local man who had been arrested for robbery was similarly found dead in his cell. The police report stated that he had committed suicide. A Facebook post by an acquaintance painted another picture:

“[P]eople who knew him are saying publicly that he had been brutally and mercilessly beaten for days to force him to confess [which he never did]. What happened to him during the six days he was in detention? Where was the prison guard before and during the alleged suicide? Who will be held accountable for the shameful, degrading and inhumane conditions of detention in the Kos jail?”

These questions remain unanswered. Following this unexplained death of this 34-year-old, the local community in Kos was further shocked by shameful images of the appalling conditions of hygiene in the police station’s detention facilities. They showed dirty mattresses piled on top of each other, rubbish everywhere and toilets that resembled a cesspit.

On 13 September 2024, Pakistani national Mohammad Kamran Asik was arrested. He was detained for 8 days, in five different police stations, without any communication with the outside world. On 21 September, he was found dead with obvious signs of abuse at the notorious Agios Panteleimon police station in Athens. The spot where he was discovered, as well as the one where he allegedly caused criminal damage, happen to be the only parts of Agios Panteleimon police station where no cameras are present. Kostas Papadakis, a lawyer, observes pointedly:

“Four of the five police stations that hosted him are located within the boundaries of the Athens municipality and have a history of abuse, torture, cover-ups of hate crimes and deaths of immigrants. It is at the very least a provocation for the prosecutor to assign the investigation of the crime to this same police department, i.e. the one of the suspected perpetrators.”

That police department has been widely known since the early 2000s, first for allegations of torture by Afghan immigrants and later for protecting and covering up the crimes of Golden Dawn (a far-right party subsequently outlawed).

Photos of the dead Mohamed Kamran Asik published by KEERFA, an association, show signs of beatings all over his body.

On 11 November 2023, a 17-year-old Roma boy, Christos Michalopoulos, was shot dead by a policeman of the Crime Prevention and Suppression Unit, a specialist police outfit, in Boeotia. According to the Hellenic Police, the officer had been suspended and criminally charged with voluntary manslaughter and for illegal discharge of his firearm. The Hellenic League for Human Rights (HLHR) called the case a “normalization of illegal police violence”, saying that it raises grave questions about police brutality. In particular, HLHR cites the limits on the use of police firearms set by Article 3 of Law No. 3169/2003.

On 8 February 2019, 34-year-old Ebuka Mamasubek, an immigrant from Nigeria and father of two children, was brought in for identification to Athens’s Omonia police station. He subsequently died there under mysterious circumstances.

The list of incidents of police brutality and arbitrariness at Omonia police station is long and goes back many years. For example, in 2009, the lawyer Janna Kurtovic reported that a man, Bin Taher Mohamed, was brutally beaten inside the station. This was followed by a cascade of related complaints by the Network for Social Support of Migrants and Refugees. “About 70 people were being held crammed into detention facilities designed for one-third of that number at most, with no right of access”, it alleged, adding that “migrants were held in these conditions for up to four months”.

In June 2007, a video was released showing foreign nationals being humiliated by police officers at Omonia. The sergeant responsible was prosecuted and resigned, and eight years later the Greek state was ordered to pay more than €150,000 to the two individuals involved. A few months earlier, in November 2006, an immigrant was detained at the station and his family was not allowed to see him. On his release the evening after his arrest, his wife claimed that he was suffering from injuries. He died on 22 November that year.

17/11/2023 – a sign by KEERFA demands “JUSTICE” for 17-year-old Roma Christos Michalopoulos during the Polytechnic march

The unit responsible for investigating such cases, the National Irregularity Incident Mechanism (EMIDIPA) of Greece’s public ombudsman, has looked into more than 1,200 cases in the last 6 years alone. It has acknowledged that they are only the tip of the iceberg. Greece’s National Human Rights Commission, an independent advisory body, talks of “recurring incidents of violence” that “reinforce an endemic culture of impunity”.

As part of a pan-European survey on deaths in police custody for the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet), MIIR asked the Hellenic Police to provide the following data:

1) The annual total numbers of deaths during police operations or of detainees between 2010 and 2024 in Greece.

2) The number of deaths, and their causes, in police stations during the same reference period (2010-2024).

3) The number of suicides during police custody for the same period.

Over a period of two months we sent three requests for the above data to the Hellenic Police. We received no response. We attempted contact again through text messages and by multiple phone calls to Constantia Demoglidou, the Hellenic Police’s spokesperson, without receiving a response. We are aware that the Ministry of Civil Protection has been informed of our questions.

The silent refusal of the Hellenic Police to provide this data suggests that its supervising ministry intends to hide the exact number of deaths in police custody. The police’s refusal to provide this data would seem to be intentional, given the experience of our Spanish colleagues of the journalistic collective Civio. For this same investigation, they contacted the Hellenic Police twice in 2024 (in June and September), and were met with the same silence.

 Translated by Voxeurop.

Original source: https://miir.gr/elas-kryvei-ton-pragmatiko-arithmo-thanaton-ypo-astynomiki-kratisi/.