Greek court upholds convictions in neo-Nazi party trial

A Greek appeals court on Wednesday upheld convictions for leaders of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn in a landmark trial over crimes committed at the height of the country’s economic crisis. The court found the officials guilty of “running a criminal organisation”, with the presiding judge set to announce later on Wednesday the punishments meted out to the more than 40 defendants, who risk sentences of up to 15 years in prison. 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.

More than 200 people rallied in front of the tribunal in a show of support for Fyssas, whose killer, Giorgos Roupakias, was found guilty of murder by the appeals court. The prosecutor in the appeals trial, which began in June 2022, called on the court in December to uphold the original guilty verdicts. 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 finish.