Six Lawmakers From Greek Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party Arrested
Image by getty images
Three more far-right Golden Dawn lawmakers have been detained pending trial in Greece on charges of belonging to a criminal group, as part of a crackdown on the party following the killing of an anti-fascist rapper by one of its supporters last year.
The stabbing of Pavlos Fissas in September, to which a Golden Dawn sympathiser has confessed, provoked protests across the country, a shake up of the police and a broad investigation into the party.
Party leader Nikos Mihaloliakos and dozens more senior party officials were arrested last September, riveting a country which has not witnessed a mass round-up of elected politicians since a military coup nearly five decades ago.
Golden Dawn members have been charged on evidence linking the party with a string of attacks, including Fissas’s stabbing and the killing of an immigrant last year.
The party, whose six out of 18 lawmakers including Mihaloliakos have been remanded in custody until their trial, called the probe by investigating magistrates “a parody”.
“We’re talking about the biggest judicial coup in Greece’s modern political history,” the party said on its website on Sunday.
Lawmakers Yorgos Germenis, Panagiotis Iliopoulos and Stathis Boukouras denied the charges against them in marathon plea sessions on Saturday and Sunday. Golden Dawn denies any involvement in Fissas’s killing.
“Golden Dawn is a legitimate political party taking on a sincere political struggle,” Iliopoulos told reporters outside the court, flanked by dozens of flag-waving supporters, some chanting the party’s slogan of “Blood! Honour! Golden Dawn!”.
“We will not buckle. Golden Dawn will be victorious – Greece will be victorious,” he said.
Party supporters who waited outside the court jeered when the verdict for two of the lawmakers was announced just before midnight on Saturday, hurling insults and water bottles at gathered journalists.
Golden Dawn, whose emblem resembles a swastika and whose members have been seen giving Nazi-style salutes, rose from being a fringe party to win 18 seats in parliament in elections in 2012. It rejects the neo-Nazi label.
Despite accusations of brutality, it has drawn on anger over the debt crisis, budget cuts, high unemployment and corruption to become Greece’s third most popular political force, although it lost some support after the killing.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
