Exclusive images and testimonies reveal conditions inside the Sintiki ‘Special Detention’ centre in Greece
A research platform linked to Oxford University is publishing today exclusive images and testimonies that show the conditions inside the Sintiki detention centre in northern Greece.
This press release is also available to read in Greek.
More formally known as the Serres Special Detention Facility, Sintiki was hastily established in July of last year to host people on the move arriving to the Greek island of Crete by sea.
Detainees inside the structure have been protesting their long-term detention and degrading living conditions inside the camp since August of last year. According to Greek newspaper EfSyn, individuals accused of organising such protests are regularly arrested and sentenced to up to three years in prison.
The images obtained by the Detention Landscapes platform show what looks like a heavily controlled and surveilled facility, set up in an extremely remote area in the Vrontous mountains, some 6km from the Greek-Bulgarian border. They also show minors detained inside the facility.
According to testimonies, police patrol the facility using an internal road which runs between two high perimeter barbed wire fences lined with security cameras. According to the Ministry of Citizen Protection, 35 police officers and 110 border guards have been deployed to the facility.
Andriani Fili, research collaborator on Detention Landscapes said: “The addition of the Sintiki ‘special detention facility’ to our platform allows us to track the development of Greece’s always changing detention landscape, and to offer human rights monitors the ability to further document violations of the rights of people detained there.”
The Detention Landscapes platform, launched in 2024 by a team of researchers from the Border Criminologies network at Oxford University, in collaboration with the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) and Mobile Info Team, has been lauded for its contribution to the work of international human rights monitors and local civil society groups.