Greek Court Hands Neo-Nazis Harsh Prison Sentences
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The president of the three-member Criminal Court, Maria Lepenioti, reads out the sentences for those convicted in the Golden Dawn trial in Athens, Greece, 2020. Foto: EPA/ Pantelis Saitas
One week after an Athens court declared the neo-Nazi party a criminal organisation, numerous leaders and members of Golden Dawn were sentenced to long prison terms on Wednesday.
Nikos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn’s lifelong leader, Ioannis Lagos, an MEP who now sits as an independent, and four more former MPs were all sentenced to 13 years each for leading a criminal organisation.
Another former MP received a sentence of ten years. Eleven other former lawmakers received sentences of between five and seven years.
The trial has lasted over five years, and none of the former lawmakers was present in court when the sentences were readout.
Giorgos Roupakias, a perpetrator of the fatal knife attack in 2013 on an anti-Fascist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, was given a life sentence for the murder that triggered the crackdown against the party. He was given an additional ten-year sentence for participating in a criminal organisation.
Five other party members were found guilty for the violent attack on three Egyptian fishermen in 2012, after being charged with attempted murder. Four others were convicted of causing bodily harm in an attack on members of the Communist Party of Greece in 2013.
Thirty-eight other members of Golden Dawn were convicted of membership of a criminal organisation, some for illegal possession of weapons and disturbing the peace.
A total of 68 people had been on trial. Hearings are expected to continue on Friday, and more arrests are expected after the court hears the final arguments for probation considerations.
Golden Dawn was formed in the 1980s, and for years remained on the fringes of Greece’s political life, although the first violent attack linked to its members’ dates as far back as 1996.
When the economic crisis hit the country in the 2000s, it rose to become the third biggest party in Greece, capitalizing on growing anti-immigrant feeling and frustration with what was deemed a corrupt political establishment. It spent seven years in parliament from 2012 to 2019.
As the trial dragged on, the party divided and former leading MPs Lagos and Ilias Kasidiaris went on to create their own parties. Other former leading members tried to sever visible ties between themselves and Golden Dawn.
The verdicts have ended the most important political trial to take place in the country in decades, and what is considered the largest trial of neo-Nazis in the EU since the post-World War II “Nuremberg trials” of the 1940s.
