World News – GB – Court declares Greek neo-Nazi party criminal group in landmark ruling – World News

The Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party was branded as a criminal organization on October 7, with its leaders facing heavy sentences in one of the largest trials in the country’s political history

The judgment came amid clashes between police and anti-fascist protesters on the sidelines of a large demonstration of some 15,000 people

Reading the verdict in a trial that lasted more than five years, presiding judge Maria Lepenioti said that Golden Dawn founder and leader Nikos Michaloliakos and other senior officials were guilty of running an organization criminal

The crowd had started to gather two hours before the verdicts were delivered in response to a call from the anti-fascist movement, unions and leftist parties

Hundreds of police officers were also deployed at the courthouse, a few kilometers from the historic center of the capital

The prosecution was sparked by the late night murder of 34-year-old anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, who was chased by a mob of Golden Dawn thugs and stabbed to death outside a West Suburb cafe Athens from Keratsini in September 2013

The killer, former truck driver Yiorgos Roupakias, confessed, but the attack sparked outrage and accusations that Golden Dawn was a paramilitary-type organization that used beatings, intimidation and murder as tactics – all with the knowledge of senior party officials

In October 6, lawmakers from the main left-wing opposition party Syriza waved letters in parliament that spelled « they are not innocent »

There was an outcry last year when Chief Prosecutor Adamantia Economou called for the acquittal of party leaders on the grounds that the existence of a criminal organization had not been proven

A total of 68 party members have been tried, including Michaloliakos and more than a dozen other former MPs like him who were elected in 2012 as an openly xenophobic group capitalizing on discontent over unemployment and the migration

In addition to rendering a verdict in the Fyssas murder trial and the trial of top Golden Dawn executives, the court was also due to render judgments in two other assault cases involving members of Golden Dawn

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Golden Dawn was in its political heyday at the time of Fyssas’s murder, having won 18 seats in the 300-seat parliament in 2012 amid anger over a financial crisis in Greece that has discredited major political parties

Three years later, he also sent three MEPs to the European Parliament in another fine performance

But the investigation took its toll, prompting the defection of a number of top officials In the last elections in 2019, the party did not win a single seat

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Golden Dawn, Greece, Nazism, Neo-Nazism