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Greece: acquittal required for leaders of Golden Dawn

In Greece, after more than four years of proceedings, the epilogue is approaching for the river trial which involves the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. Wednesday, December 18, the representative of the public prosecutor asked for the acquittal of the party leader as well as fifteen of his executives. Lighting.

From our correspondent in Athens,

This trial is mainly the result of the murder in 2013 of a 34-year-old Greek rapper in the outskirts of Athens. Pavlos Fyssas, that's his name, a committed and openly anti-fascist artist, had been stabbed by a supposed member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.

That evening, outside a cafe in Piraeus, a whole band of supporters of the extremist organization had melted into another group where the rapper was, in what looks like an ambush.

In the eyes of several investigators, certain party officials were notably aware, this famous evening, of the preparation in progress for the deadly attack. The questions at the heart of this trial were therefore: one, was this murder premeditated? And two, is the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party a criminal organization?

To these questions, what does the Prosecutor's closing address answer ?

This "surprise" indictment does not question the guilt of Yiorgos Roupakias, the presumed member of the party, who was holding the knife. On the other hand, the prosecutor considered, on the one hand, that this crime had not been premeditated, and on the other hand, that no order had been given by officials of Golden Dawn.

The indictment therefore requests acquittal for both the leader of the party, Nikos Michaloliakos, and for the fifteen other senior leaders of the organization, including former deputies, who were all prosecuted in this case.

Does the Golden Dawn party still have a future in Greece ?

In theory, the verdict should fall in early 2020, by the end of winter at the latest. It is difficult to say whether the neo-Nazi party will succeed in recovering from it. With this story, he saw his election results collapse. But if the court follows the requisitions of the prosecutor and effectively acquits all the executives of Golden Dawn, this will in any case give grain to grind its leaders, who have long shouted "political conspiracy".

For the record, the party had been propelled by the economic crisis which affected the country from 2010, and even if it has disappeared from the Greek Parliament today, it counted up to twenty deputies. The new influx into Greece of several thousand asylum seekers from Turkey since this summer could also fuel the xenophobic rhetoric of Golden Dawn, if the group finally succeeds in rising from the ashes after this long trial.

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