Athens appeal court upholds guilty verdicts for members of prescribed extremist party, five-and-a-half years after the first-instance ruling.
Eleni Stamatoukou
The Criminal Appeal Court in Athens ruled in a final judgment on Wednesday that the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party is a criminal organisation and that 42 of its members convicted in the first-instance verdict five-and-a-half years ago were guilty.
“The final judgment, that Golden Dawn is a criminal organisation, creates a final barrier to the impunity of fascist violence for many decades in Greece,” Kostas Papadakis, a lawyer for Egyptian fisherman Abuzid Embarak, a victim of attempted murder by Golden Dawn members in 2012, told BIRN.
As in the first-instance ruling, seven members of Golden Dawn’s management, including its founder, Nikos Michaloliakos, and administrative executives Ioannis Lagos, and Ilias Kasidiaris, were found guilty of leading a criminal organisation and 11 former MPs were found guilty of membership.
Giorgos Roupakias was found guilty of the intended murder of the anti-fascist artist Pavlos Fyssas in 2013, and 15 defendants were found guilty of complicity in the murder. Finally, five defendants were found guilty of the attempted homicide of the Egyptian fisherman Embarak in Perama, a suburb of Piraeus, in 2012.
The defendants’ sentences will be announced in the coming days, said Papadakis; their lawyers are currently pleading mitigating circumstances. “Regardless of the outcome of the mitigating circumstances and the length of the sentences, which for some may increase, because an opposing prosecutorial appeal is pending, some risk going to prison for the first time,” he said.
Sentences for six of the defendants were suspended until the second-instance decision was issued.
Of the 42 defendants, only Ioannis Lagos and Ilias Kasidiaris were present at the trial and are the only ones now in prison, the Greek media outlet Kathimerini reported.
Michaloliakos was released in September last year, less than halfway into his sentence, and allowed to serve the remainder at home on health grounds.
Asked about the defendants who had been released, Papadakis said: “If their [existing] sentence remains, they will not go back to prison based on the court decision. If it is increased, they will go back to prison.” The sentences are yet to be announced.
Most of the defendants in the first-instance trial appealed, seeking reduced sentences or acquittal. At the same time, Stelios Kostarellos, deputy prosecutor in the first trial, appealed against the sentences handed down for the Golden Dawn leaders and those convicted of the attempted murder of the Egyptian fisherman, arguing they were too lenient.
Founded in the 1980s, Golden Dawn rose to prominence during the financial crisis in the 2000s and 2010s. In 2012, the party entered parliament for the first time with 18 seats, but its strength began to wane after the murder of Fyssas; by 2019, it was no longer in parliament.
