Necati Zontul is a Turkish National who was tortured and raped in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 in summer 2001. The assault was initially denied by the Coastguard, the Ministry of Merchant Marine and then dismissed as a one-off incident by the police:

August 14, 2001: Head of Internal Affairs, Vassilis Tsiatouras dismisses the incident in Chania

Chania

Chaniá , , also transliterated Chania, Hania, and Xania, older form Chanea and Venetian Canea, Ottoman Turkish خانيه Hanya) is the second largest city of Crete and the capital of the Chania peripheral unit...

 as a one-off aberration. Any abuse resulted from "heavy work load that the master of the Heraklion

Heraklion

Heraklion, or Heraclion is the largest city and the administrative capital of the island of Crete, Greece. It is the 4th largest city in Greece....

 harbor, captain Markos Koutsourakis, who oversees the EDE, had" (August 12 Avgi: The white cells of Chania). The Chief of the CoastGuard, Andreas Syrigos, says that "based on information received from the person who carries out the EDE, the immigrants were injured while they were either having an argument or attempting to escape"
In contrast a UNHCR official told reporters:
"One does not have to be a doctor to see that these people were beaten." (Athens News)

After international pressure, 6 men were tried (Flourakis, Lefakis, Moumtzis and Valirakis, Vaddakis and Dandoulakis)and 5 found guilty in 2001. Subsequently, three of them were acquitted and the sentences of the other two, DANDOULAKIS and VARDAKIS, who were specifically linked to the allegation of rape, were dramatically reduced to fines. It is understood that they remain in uniform, but the Greek Government has persistently refused to deny or admit this. The Athens News reported the 2004 case in sensational terms:

"This is the first time officers in Greece are charged with torture and abuse of authority based on article 137A of the Greek criminal code. If convicted, they face from three years up to life in prison.

More than 100 asylum seekers reported having suffered beatings and other inhuman and degrading treatment at a makeshift detention centre in Hania, Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

 in May 2001. They were part of a group of 119 men, 20 women, and 25 children from Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

, Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

 and Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

."

they also provided a list of victims who were hospitalised or seriously traumatised:

• Necati Zontul, 36: beaten and raped by a coastguard officer
• Ardal [or Erdan] Akgun, age 17: extensive inflammation
  Inflammation
  Inflammation is part of the complex biological response of vascular tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants. Inflammation is a protective attempt by the organism to remove the injurious stimuli and to initiate the healing process...
  
   on the right side of his chest.
• Ozgan Eshik, age 17: swelling of his right elbow
• Hanafi Alton, age 36: large bruise
  Bruise
  A bruise, also called a contusion, is a type of relatively minor hematoma of tissue in which capillaries and sometimes venules are damaged by trauma, allowing blood to seep into the surrounding interstitial tissues. Bruises can involve capillaries at the level of skin, subcutaneous tissue, muscle,...
  
   across his chest.
• Bulent Sahin, age 27: complains of acute deafness in his right ear.
• Halil Gilgil, age 20: severe abdominal pain
• Farhad Damir, age 18, large haematoma [large swelling of clotted blood] in the back of his left thigh.
• Gehad Korlalg, age 26, complains of head injury and has two bruises [one 10cm long and the other 40 cm long]
• Khalid Bagish, age 29, bruise on the right abdomen
  Abdomen
  In vertebrates such as mammals the abdomen constitutes the part of the body between the thorax and pelvis. The region enclosed by the abdomen is termed the abdominal cavity...
  
   and two bruises around his armpits.
• Mehmet Nuri Aktay, age 29: complains of pain when moving his left arm and has bruises on the left side of his back.
• Rahme [Rahmi] Tunc, age 29, four bruises on his back.

Since the publication of this summary (Athens News: 27 February 2004, Kathy Tzilivakis), further evidence has surfaced of other victims, who for one reason or another failed to testify. Specifically, another (Kurd

Kürd

Kürd or Kyurd or Kyurt may refer to:*Kürd Eldarbəyli, Azerbaijan*Kürd Mahrızlı, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Goychay, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Jalilabad, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Qabala, Azerbaijan*Qurdbayram, Azerbaijan...

) victim called Yussef, who alleges rape and talks of Russian roulette and mock executions.

Necati's original evidence given to translator Lisa Turkuman was seriously condensed and essentially faulty. On the basis of this and an interview with the Greek Helsinki Monitor in October 2001, Amnesty

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

 recorded in its report of 2002 that Necati "changed his evidence". He insists he did no such thing, and indeed at the trial in 2004, the Commander of the unit testified against his own men and seems to corroborate Necati's story. Recently, Amnesty International Secretariat admitted, that the staff at the Athens Office had resigned and that they had perhaps relied too much on information about the case that had come from only one source. Indeed, from the first television interview to Tempo TV he gave in October 2001, when footage was intercut with scenes from "Basic Instinct

Basic Instinct

Basic Instinct is a 1992 erotic thriller directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Joe Eszterhas, and starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone....

", there seems to have been an effort to discredit Necati. When the Archbishop of Athens, Christodoulos

Christodoulos

Christodoulos was Archbishop of Athens and All Greece and as such the primate of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece, from 1998 until his death, in 2008.- Early life and career :...

 was approached for help in 2003, he went on National television that evening to say "All Turks are Barbarians." Christodoulos has never publicly condemned the rise in racist agitation and its apparent links with the Greek Orthodox Church. (http://www.archive.org/details/FullNecatiFilmPreview)

The MEP

Member of the European Parliament

A Member of the European Parliament is a person who has been elected to the European Parliament. The name of MEPs differ in different languages, with terms such as europarliamentarian or eurodeputy being common in Romance language-speaking areas.When the European Parliament was first established,...

 Bill Miller wrote to the Ministry of Justice a few times and received no reply in over 3 years.
The Greek Embassy in London denied that any court case was taking place in 2004 and in 2006, a court official in the Military Appellate Court in Athens told Necati that his assailant, Dandoulakis, was "really a good boy" and that Necati was not among witnesses being called to testify. Despite apparent bias, however, the guilty verdict was upheld.

Nevertheless, the Greek Government has failed to apologise, accept responsibility for the actions of its armed and uniformed security personnel, issue a statement of non-recurrence or offer compensation. The Greek Ombudsman has written to and repeatedly discussed (in 2007) with the Greek Government suggesting that an apology and a statement of sympathy would be in order. The Government has never responded. Further instances of torture, and abuse by the Greek Coastguard have been recorded and some are recorded on Youtube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?search=&mode=related&v=q13MfYkfywo) and ref to Pakistani torture in 2005:http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article335337.ece

The Greek Government in response to a request from the British Foreign Office in 2006-2007 issued a range of 4 conflicting dates for the cessation of national remedies.

Together with his partner, Tim Wilson, Necati has been making a film of his experiences. It mixes animation and live action footage and will be completed in two parts. The first, "A Torture Cartoon" is due for release in February 2011 and the second, "A Travesty of Justice", sponsored by Screen South and the RIFE lottery project, is due to be released in summer 2011.

The case is now before the European Court of Human rights.
the treatment of foreign detainees and refugees in Greece has not greatly improved - to such an extent that the British Government has recently decided not to send refugees / asylum seekers back to Greece should they subsequently have made their way to the UK. http://ncadc.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/uk-suspends-returns-of-asylum-seekers-to-greece/

http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/organizations/ghm/annual_report_2001.rtf
http://mostlywater.org/video_greece_shocking_video_of_the_torture_of_immigrants_inside_police_station
http://www.diplomaticobserver.com/news_read.asp?id=1654
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=15837 (Afghans tortured)