Council of Europe anti-torture Committee visits Greece

Strasbourg, 05.10.2009 - A delegation of the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) carried out a visit to Greece from 17 to 29 September 2009. It was the Committee’s fifth periodic visit to Greece.

The visit provided the opportunity to assess progress made since the previous periodic visit in September 2005 and the ad hoc visits of February 2007 and September 2008. In the course of the visit, the CPT’s delegation examined the treatment and conditions of detention of persons held in a number of prisons and in aliens detention centers, including in the eastern Aegean and the Evros region.

The delegation also visited police and border guard establishments with a view to examining the conditions of detention and the safeguards in place, both in relation to persons suspected of a criminal offense and those held under Aliens legislation.

In the course of the visit, the delegation met the Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice, Athanasios ANDREOULAKOS, Head of Penitentiary Policy, Christina PETROU, and the Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Cessation, Ioannis TENTES, as well as senior officials from the Greek Police Force and representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Health, Interior and Justice. The delegation also met the Ombudsman and Deputy Ombudsman, representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, and several members of non-governmental organizations.

The visit was carried out by the following members of the CPT:
- Mario FELICE, Head of delegation (Maltese),
- Anna GAVRILOVA-ANCHEVA (Bulgarian)
- Emilio GINES SANTIDRIÁN (Spanish)
- Marija DEFINIS-GOJANOVIC (Croatian)
- Stefan WEINBERG-KRAKOWSKI (Swedish)

They were supported by Hugh CHETWYND, Head of Unit, and Marco LEIDEKKER of the CPT's Secretariat, and assisted by two experts, Martin LOMAS, Team leader at Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for England and Wales, United Kingdom, and Alan MITCHELL, Former Head of the Scottish Prison Health Care Service, United Kingdom.

The delegation visited the following establishments:

Establishments under the authority of the Ministry of Interior

Achaea Prefecture
Patras Police Stations (1st, 2nd , 4th and 5th precincts)
Patras Transfer Centre

Athens Prefecture
Omonia Police Station
Petrou Rali Alien holding facility
Holding Areas at Athens Airport
Moschatou Police Station
Piraeus Alien holding facility

Alexandroupolis Prefecture
Alexandroupolis Police Station
Feres Border Guard Station
Soufli Police and Border Guard Station

Chios Prefecture
Chios Town Police Station

Kavala Prefecture
Kavala Police Station
Neo Karvali Border Guard Station

Lesbos Prefecture
Mytilini Police Headquarters
Pagani Special holding facility for illegal immigrants

Orestiada Prefecture
Filakio Special holding facility for illegal immigrants
Neo Himonio Border Guard Station
Orestiada Police Station

Phocis Prefecture
Amfissa Police Transfer Centre

Rodophi Prefecture
Venna Special Holding facility for illegal immigrants

Serres Prefecture
Serres Police Station
Siderokastro Police Station

Thessaloniki Prefecture
Thessaloniki Airport Holding facilities
Dodecanesis Street Police Station
Kordello Border Guard Station
Monasterou Police Station

Xanthi Prefecture
Xanthi Police and Border guard Station

Ministry of Merchant Marine

Chios Port detention facility
Mytilini Port detention facility
Patras Port detention facility

Establishments under the authority of the Ministry of Justice

Amfissa Prison
Chios Judicial Prison
Korydallos Men’s Prison (for a targeted follow up visit)
Korydallos Women’s Remand Prison (for a targeted follow up visit)
Malandrino Prison
Patras Prison
Thessaloniki Prison
Thiva Women’s Prison

Council of Europe Press release

you can find here the Council of Europe anti-torture Committee recent (30.06.2009) report on Greece after their visit in September 2008.

CIA health professionals’ role in torture worse than previously known

Physicians for Human Rights Press release
August 31, 2009

Cambridge, MA — The extent to which American physicians and psychologists violated human rights and betrayed the ethical standards of their professions by designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program is greater than previously known, according to a report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

A team of PHR doctors authored the new white paper, Aiding Torture: Health Professionals' Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 Inspector General's Report. The report details how the CIA relied on medical expertise to rationalize and carry out abusive and unlawful interrogations. It also refers to aggregate collection of data on detainees' reaction to interrogation methods. PHR is concerned that this data collection and analysis may amount to human experimentation and calls for more investigation on this point. If confirmed, the development of a research protocol to assess and refine the use of the waterboard or other techniques would likely constitute a new, previously unknown category of ethical violations committed by CIA physicians and psychologists.

"Medical doctors and psychologists colluded with the CIA to keep observational records about waterboarding, which approaches unethical and unlawful human experimentation," says PHR Medical Advisor and lead report author Scott Allen, MD. For example, "Interrogators would place a cloth over a detainee's face to block breathing and induce feelings of fear, helplessness, and a loss of control. A doctor would stand by to monitor and calibrate this physically and psychologically harmful act, which amounts to torture. It is profoundly unsettling to learn of the central role of health professionals in laying a foundation for US government lawyers to rationalize the CIA's illegal torture program."

The Inspector General's report documents some practices — previously unknown or unconfirmed — that were used to bring about excruciating pain, terror, humiliation, and shame for months on end.

These practices included:

- Mock executions;
- Brandishing guns and power drills;
- Threats to sexually assault family members and murder children;
- "Walling" — repeatedly slamming an unresponsive detainee's head against a cell wall; and
- Confinement in a box.

"These unlawful, unethical, and ineffective interrogation tactics cause significant bodily and mental harm," said co-author and PHR Senior Medical Advisor Vincent Iacopino, MD, PhD. "The CIA Inspector General's report confirms that torture escalates in severity and torturers frequently go beyond approved techniques."

"The required presence of health professionals did not make interrogation methods safer, but sanitized their use, escalated abuse, and placed doctors and psychologists in the untenable position of calibrating harm rather than serving as protectors and healers. The fact that psychologists went beyond monitoring, and actually designed and implemented these abuses – while simultaneously serving as 'safety monitors' – reveals the ethical bankruptcy of the entire program," stated co-author Steven Reisner, PhD, PHR's Psychological Ethics Advisor.

"That health professionals who swear to oaths of healing so abused the sacred trust society places in us by instigating, legitimizing and participating in torture, is an abomination," states co-author Allen Keller, MD, Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. "Health professionals who aided torture must be held accountable by professional associations, by state licensing boards, and by society. Accountability is essential to maintain trust in our professions and to end torture, which scars bodies and minds, leaving survivors to endure debilitating injuries, humiliating memories and haunting nightmares."

PHR has called for full investigation and remedies, including accountability for war crimes, and reparation, such as compensation, medical care and psycho-social services. PHR also calls for health professionals who have violated ethical standards or the law to be held accountable through criminal prosecution, loss of license and loss of professional society membership where appropriate.

Since 2005, PHR has documented the systematic use of psychological and physical torture by US personnel against detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram airbase, and elsewhere in its groundbreaking reports, Break Them Down, Leave No Marks, and Broken Laws, Broken Lives.

Economic turmoil has exacerbated violence against women

9 September 2009 – The scourge of violence against women has worsened as a result of the global financial downturn over the past year, Deputy UN Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today as she urged some of the world’s richest countries to lead the way in turning the many international pledges to support women and girls into concrete results.
In a keynote address in Rome to a ministerial-level conference on violence against women, being held under the auspices of the Italian presidency of the Group of Eight (G8), Ms. Migiro said there is evidence that women and girls are exposed to a greater risk of violence during times of hardship.
“We have seen rising levels of despair and frustration in families and communities around the world, exacerbating violence against women,” she said.
“In a recent survey of more than 630 domestic violence shelters in the United States, 75 per cent reported an increase in women seeking help for abuse since September 2008, coinciding with a major downturn in the US economy. We must remain especially vigilant through these tough times.”
Ms. Migiro detailed to the conference some of the steps taken by the UN to end violence against women and girls, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s UNiTE campaign, which calls on world leaders to launch national campaigns aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls in all parts of the world.
She noted that the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, which is nearing the thirtieth anniversary of its adoption, and several landmark Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security indicated that the international community has taken “significant” steps towards protecting women from violence.
However, “we still have a long road to walk before the full meaning of these international agreements is fully transformed from words on paper to reality on the ground.”
Ms. Migiro urged participants at today’s conference to put into practice two earlier recommendations calling on G8 members to enhance the rights of women.
The first calls on G8 members to back programmes that promote women’s rights and make information about sexual and reproductive health widely accessible, while the second calls for support for peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations worldwide so as to emphasize security, the protection of civilians and action against sexual and gender-based violence.
“Ending violence against women will not be easy. It will require sustained dedication and collaboration,” she said.



UN News Centre

the face of violence is one...