Primary sources: detentionlandscapes.uwazi.io, law.ox.ac.uk

Oxford University researchers on Tuesday published a database counting at least 112 deaths of foreign nationals in Greek police stations and migrant detention facilities since 2000, including 34 cases they say do not appear in Hellenic Police statistics obtained through freedom-of-information requests^1,2,3.

The dataset is part of the Wellcome Trust-funded Medicalising Immigration Detention project and is hosted on Detention Landscapes in English, Greek and Arabic^2,3. Andriani Fili, Stergios Magkriotis and Alice Troy-Donovan compiled police figures, international monitoring reports, news archives and testimonies from former detainees^2,3. They said the 112 figure is a minimum, not a complete list^2,3,4.

The authors include deaths in police stations and immigration centres, during police transport, and in hospitals while the person remained in police custody, covering both immigration and criminal detention of foreign nationals^3,4. They exclude prisons, open refugee camps and deaths after release^3,4.

Of the 112 deaths, at least 84 were in police stations that have no medical staff, and 27 were in pre-removal detention centres (PROKEKA) opened from 2012, where health services are formally provided by the public company AEMY with European Union funding^1,2,3. Official sources recorded 44 suicides, 20 pathological causes and no cause in 36 cases^3,5.

Among documented cases, 82 were men, four were women and gender was unrecorded in 26^3,5. For 70 people with a known age, the median was 33.5 years and 45 were under 40^3,5. Albanian and Pakistani nationals were the largest identified groups, 13 each; nationality was unspecified in 32 cases^3,5.

The authors said police FOI replies, including requests sent in October 2025, were incomplete and inconsistent, sometimes listing only a year and region^2,4. They described 11 deaths recorded in the Piraeus police directorate in 2003 with no corroborating sources they could find⁴. After a Greek Ombudsman intervention, police declined a more detailed breakdown, citing administrative burden, the Oxford blog and To Vima reported^3,4. Reuters said the Greek government and police ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment¹.

TVXS and To Vima said that in April 2026 the Amygdaleza pre-removal centre had seven health workers, including two doctors and two nurses, for 666 detainees^2,4. To Vima, drawing on Detention Landscapes, said Greece listed seven pre-removal centres with 3,836 places in mid-2024, 24,174 detention orders in 2023 and 2,564 third-country nationals in police or other facilities at the end of 2023⁴.

TVXS and To Vima cited a 2025 Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture report on Greece that found serious gaps in medical assessment, supervision and suicide prevention in police custody^2,4. Reuters described a 2026 CPT report saying some custody deaths could have been prevented and that Greece cited a 2025-2030 plan to improve detention conditions¹. The Oxford team asked anyone with further evidence on individual deaths to contact them^2,3.