Yes, I did.
It was unfortunate. I grabbed a knife and stabbed him.
Right now I am doing time for an armed robbery with a balaclava.
All five of us got 55 years each.
My sentence is 109 years for people smuggling.
Turn around and look at me. Do you take drugs?
Take off your clothes and put them over there.
Please open your mouth.
Please get on your knees.
I require a urine sample, please.
Yes. About 50%. Usually pills.
And, uh, heroin.
Your tests are negative.
Come, get inside.
The truth is the majority of inmates come from abroad.
The prison would have no overpopulation problems
if it only had Greek inmates.
Number one is your cell. You can go inside from here.
I am Greek.
Albania, Afghanistan.
They unlock the doors at 8:20 a.m.
until 12:30 p.m.
Then the food is distributed.
At 2:30 p.m., they open the door
until 8:40 p.m.
After that, we get fed.
Every day is the same.
The old man.
No, every-- All together, my friend.
We are friends here, you know?
We are all friends.
I've been here ten years already for murder.
I came to this jail two years ago because of its drug rehab unit.
I was a user of drugs.
My second time in prison.
First, hashish. After the second time, hashish.
People smuggling.
That's nothing, believe me.
There's a broken water pipe here that needs fixing.
For nearly a week, the prisoners haven't had any hot water.
If you are an inmate with some skills
or you have a trade, you can do it.
Working here in prison means we'll be released sooner.
I've not been in the outside world for ten years.
I'm not about to do it now. Let's get going.
You are tired.
You want to have a break?
They don't cut corners. The portions are generous.
I'm not hungry. I had cornflakes at 11:00 a.m.
Yeah, I'm okay.
This morning, I got him milk while he was still sleeping.
- Mm-hmm. -I feed him, as he is old.
He is of a certain age, you have to admit.
We respect him. He is older than us.
Cornflakes.
One liter of milk with cornflakes.
Mazar-i-Sharif.
My father died before I was even born.
I was one of five brothers,
so I had to work to support my mother.
We were very poor.
A lot of the time, we didn't have food to eat.
I crossed Iran, then Turkey.
We were 120 people in one truck.
I paid the smuggler $500.
We drove for 13 hours without stopping.
You change cars, and during the nights, you stay in the mountains.
I spent one night in Turkey and then paid 1,200 euros,
and the next day I was in Greece.
Very few. The ones who didn't have any money were locked up…
until they were able to pay up.
They were treated like slaves.
Some starved to death. Some died of thirst.
Uh, many were arrested
by the police in Iran.
If they were found in the mountains, they were shot dead.
So the only thing I could do was work as a laborer for a farmer.
I worked for five to seven months.
I was asking for my money patiently, and he kept ignoring me.
I told him, "If you don't pay, I'll harm you."
I grabbed a knife and stabbed him.
Yes, just the one time, but unfortunately, it was fatal.
I stabbed him down here.
I didn't intend to kill him.
It wasn't premeditated.
After my mom died, I was doing heroin for six months.
It was like a death penalty.
I didn't have any will to survive.
I choose to do this because
it makes me forget about my sentence.
I fill my time not thinking of shit,
like stabbing someone or finding drugs.
Yes, I did.
He didn't die. He was severely injured.
Because he owed me money.
Uh, I stabbed him three times.
They gave me ten more years.
I made a mistake. I went to prison, and I paid a bitter price.
That's life. When you do something wrong, you have to pay for it.
We do searches every day.
Each day, it's a different floor, a different cell.
First, we take the inmates out of the cells
and search each and every one of them.
And then the guards go in and search the cell itself.
It can be problematic.
The inmates get annoyed because we are going through their home.
Drugs, homemade wine, homemade knives.
Come and see some things that we've found
and confiscated during the last years.
I think some of them are very interesting.
We don't normally search religious objects,
but they can be dangerous as well.
LOVE FOR OUR FELLOW MAN MUST GOVERN OUR HEART AND SOUL
The guards aren't here to let us out yet.
Now we are going to work.
Cheers.
It's been so long since I've been out here.
Eight months.
Yes.
Because of my work. I'm always at work.
This is the exercise area.
They're water bottles filled with sand.
A friend of mine was doing it.
I helped him out.
I knew another guy who was renting out vans,
and I introduced them to each other.
Yes.
What happened next?
The police made an arrest.
All five of us got 55 years each.
And also a fine of 500,000 euros.
It was only an introduction.
I am not responsible for what happened. I didn't take it seriously.
Anybody could have done it.
Raphael, have you got a minute?
Kostas?
Today you'll both work on the generator.
Okay. See you.
We are going to fix the generator.
We will modify the exhaust pipe.
Three years.
Yes.
My responsibility was to transport them.
These people had come to the Evros border, and I transported them,
put them in a truck and got them to Thessaloniki.
On the highway.
There are some places out there, public toilets in certain locations.
They'll wait there, and we'll load them from there.
Ninety-nine people.
The trucks were big, very big, with plenty of space.
I stopped at a gas station.
That's where the police stopped me.
My sentence is 109 years for people smuggling.
How the Greek system works is,
whatever the sentence you get,
the most that you'll serve is 20 years. That's the most you'll do.
My main motive was money.
Uh, stop. Please stop.
- Okay. - Stop.
I didn't harm anyone. I didn't kill anyone.
Until a few years ago, people smuggling was just a misdemeanor.
Now it's a criminal offense. I believe it's disproportionate.
I might be offender, but what I did is no crime.
I came to Turkey to Istanbul.
I found a smuggler there.
I paid him almost $80,000.
We were in a vehicle for almost two hours,
then we walked for seven hours to reach the border.
There was water, a river.
It was a small boat,
meant to be for 14 or 20 people, but we were 47 in it together.
They threw away our bags and everything to free up space for us.
We had to put the small children under our feet.
It was a big water, uh, big river. It was not pleasant at all.
At one point, my family and four sons were swept away by the water.
We were swept away for 100 meters, and we thought, "That's it!"
There was someone I knew.
He'd left home a couple of months before us.
He fell in the water. His wife and his two children drowned.
Their bodies were never found.
The plan was to go straight through Bulgaria.
Uh, that's why we paid so much.
But they conned me and brought me here.
On some of the smuggling routes,
other smugglers were actually robbing people.
Smuggling is all lies. There's no truth to it.
Yes, there are others pending.
Those cases
have nothing to do with me.
I've never been involved in an incident like that.
It's never happened to me.
No.
The long sentences don't work.
Seventy percent of inmates will do it again even if they don't want to,
because there's nothing for them outside.
Yes, it's totally different.
A lot of the time, I don't feel like I am in prison.
We painted Prometheus stealing the fire.
Prometheus is the name of our community.
There is our motto,
and this is what we shout after our therapy.
We are together, bound by our souls,
one for the other, for a better life!
We are Prometheus!
I share it with another member of the community.
Now I am doing time for an armed robbery with a balaclava.
Uh, banks, post offices, betting shops.
Things like that.
An automatic, not a revolver. An automatic.
I've never shot anyone.
I just fire into the air to scare them to get the money.
I had to do what I had to do to get my fix.
Heroin, cocaine, hash…
Since I was a kid,
I've had this image of myself,
that I am a criminal, that there is nothing good in me,
which is exactly the opposite.
I found people who show me real love and respect here.
- Good morning, everyone. - Good morning.
Who wants to share his thoughts today?
Good morning.
Uh, it's very hard for me to talk about this stuff, but I'm trying.
My sister visited me after a long time.
At last we talked about some issues with our father.
I've spoken with one of my children.
My other two don't speak to me.
If only they knew their dad
is a changed man.
Very good. Embrace.
Let me help you.
Take the icing and spread it all over.
You're doing it better than me.
I didn't believe that I could ever live without drugs.
I didn't believe I could work, not even prepare this cake.
I can understand how they felt.
I can put myself in their position. I can understand how they felt.
I can't do anything about it.
I feel guilt and remorse.
I am at peace with my past.
♪ May you live long May you grow old and have white hair ♪
♪ Give to everyone The light of knowledge ♪
♪ And may all say here is a wise man ♪
Over there, you have to face yourself in the mirror,
realize who you are, what you've done.
When you're in here, it is difficult to face up to yourself.
It's difficult for anyone.
I feel I am at an age that allows me to handle these things now,
and it's for my own good.
There's no downside.
It's time to decide what I want to do with my life when I get out.
I have to be ready to reenter society.
I hope to get out of prison
and be a normal person
and forget what I've been through these past 15 years.
The reality is
our resources are extremely limited.
The prison was designed to hold around 360 people.
Right now, instead of 360, we are accommodating 440 prisoners.
It's a number that goes well beyond the capabilities of the prison.
What you say is true,
but a stricter sentence does act as a deterrent.
As well as sentencing, we need to educate these people
that what they've done are criminal acts.
Putting the lives of human beings in danger is a big crime for me.