MEP and former Greek neo-Nazi extradited from Brussels to Athens

Ioannis Lagos escorted by anti-terrorism police to the prosecutor's office in Athens, Greece, May 15, 2021. REUTERS - COSTAS BALTAS

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Greek MEP Ioannis Lagos, a former member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for " 

leading a criminal organization

 ", was extradited on Saturday May 15 in Athens under a warrant. arrested and handed over to the Greek authorities.

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Ioannis Lagos, 48, arrested at the end of April in Brussels the day after his parliamentary immunity was lifted, arrived on Saturday shortly before 3.20 p.m. local (1.20 p.m. UT) at Athens international airport.

He got off the plane flanked by five Greek police officers, before boarding a police van to be driven to Athens under biker escort, according to television footage.

Ioannis Lagos, who is to be presented to the Athens prosecutor and then jailed on Sunday, is one of about 40 Golden Dawn members

sentenced in October in Athens

after a five-and-a-half-year marathon trial.

He received a prison sentence of 13 years and 8 months for " 

leading a criminal organization 

", in this case the neo-Nazi party.

This former security agent had, on the day of the verdict of the Athens criminal court, " 

left Greece for Brussels in order to escape conviction 

", according to French MEP Marie Toussaint (Greens), the rapporteur of the European Parliament on this file.

A senior executive in Golden Dawn, Ioannis Lagos was remanded in custody, like the entire Golden Dawn management, after the murder near Athens of an anti-fascist musician, Pavlos Fyssas, in September 2013. He was released on parole 18 months later pending trial.

Waiver of immunity

His parliamentary immunity was lifted at the end of April by a very large majority of Members of the European Parliament, at the request of the Greek authorities.

The MEP, however, decided not to appeal the judgment, as he was entitled to do, said his lawyer, Jan De Winter, in a message to AFP, information which was confirmed by the Brussels public prosecutor's office.

Ioannis Lagos had enjoyed this immunity since his election in July 2019 to the European Parliament under the banner of Golden Dawn, a formation he left a few months later to become independent.

Shortly after his arrest in Brussels, he tweeted: "I

am in a police vehicle, thieves, atheists, anti-Hellenes are going to imprison me 

".

When the young anti-fascist rapper was murdered, he was the local leader of Golden Dawn in the geographic area where the assassination took place.

" 

Nothing would have been done without Lagos

'

approval 

," the victim's mother said during the trial.

Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos and most of the convicts have been jailed, with only the organization's number two, Christos Pappas, still at large.

At the height of the financial crisis in Greece in 2012, Golden Dawn had managed to enter the Greek Parliament, taking advantage of the desperation of the Greeks and the discrediting of the traditional parties, the New Democracy (right), in power now, and the Pasok ( socialist).

Created in the 1990s, this party had for a long time enjoyed near impunity despite at least two murders and numerous acts of violence perpetrated against migrants, homosexuals and left activists.

Its decline began after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas and the indictment of his leadership and other key executives.

Its failure in its attempt to enter the Greek Parliament in the last legislative elections in 2019 as well as the condemnation of its leadership last October caused its explosion and resulted in the loss of most of its electorate.

(With AFP)

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