Sawt Falasteen - Greek court to hand down sentences in neo-Nazi party appeal trial

More than 40 defendants are facing sentences of up to 15 years in prison in the appeal trial, which began in June 2022.

Crimes attributed to the outfit include the savage beating of a group of Egyptian fishermen in 2012 and the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in 2013.

The trial prosecutor in December called on the court to uphold the original guilty verdicts against the defendants.

Senior Golden Dawn cadres have always denied involvement in the attacks, which were carried out by the group's so-called "assault squads".

But in her closing arguments, prosecutor Kyriaki Stefanatou said the party's founder and leader Nikos Michaloliakos had "complete control and knowledge of what was happening".

She called the paramilitary-style group a "true child of Nazi ideology".

Michaloliakos, a 68-year-old mathematician who has called the Holocaust a "lie", was granted conditional release from prison last year on health grounds.

A former protege of Greek dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, he had been sentenced to 13-and-a-half years in a landmark trial in 2020 that took more than five years to conclude.

The court at the time concluded that Golden Dawn was a criminal organisation disguised as a political party.

Defendants in 2020 were convicted of crimes ranging from running a criminal organisation, murder and assault to illegal weapons possession.

One Golden Dawn lawmaker in 2013 had famously attempted to strike then Athens mayor Giorgos Kaminis for blocking a "Greeks-only" food handout organised by the party.

Senior Golden Dawn figures still behind bars include former European Parliament member Yiannis Lagos, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and extradited from Belgium in 2021 to serve a sentence of 13 years and eight months.

Lagos's lawyer at the trial was far-right ideologue Constantinos Plevris, the father of Greece's Migration Minister Thanos Plevris.

In 2022, Plevris senior caused an outcry by giving a fascist salute in court, and was later expelled by the Athens Bar Association, the body representing the capital's lawyers.

Former party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris is also serving a sentence of 13 years and six months.

Kasidiaris's influence among far-right circles is believed to have been instrumental in getting a new hardline party, the Spartans, elected to parliament in 2023.

- Third-biggest party -

The xenophobic and antisemitic organisation created by Michaloliakos was for decades a fringe party, until Greece's 2010 debt crisis.

In its early years, Golden Dawn glorified Adolf Hitler in its party publications, but later toned down its rhetoric, claiming instead to be nationalist.

The group capitalised on public anger over immigration and austerity cuts, entering parliament for the first time in 2012.

It remained in parliament until 2019.

At the height of its influence, it was the country's third-biggest party, picking up around 400,000 votes.

It was considered to have significant support among police officers and even some senior Church officials, while priests and monks attended its rallies.

Michaloliakos accused mainstream parties of bankrupting the country, famously declaring in a 2012 speech to followers: "These hands may occasionally (give Nazi salutes) but they are clean hands. They have not stolen."

At the original trial, prosecutors told the court that Michaloliakos ran his party under a military-style hierarchy modelled on Hitler's Nazi party, with himself as leader for more than three decades.

A search of party members' homes in 2013 uncovered firearms and other weapons, as well as Nazi memorabilia.

U.AlSharif--SF-PST