[News]The dome of Golden Dawn, found guilty of leading a criminal gang

[SougarLord]

After a macro-trial that has lasted more than five and a half years, the president of the Court of Appeal in charge of trying the murders and other violent acts of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, Judge Maria Lepenioti, read the long list this Wednesday morning of convictions.

 

The most important, the one that considers the founder and leader of the formation, Nikos Mijaloliakos, as well as exporter, Ilias Kasidiaris, guilty of running a criminal organization. Along with them, other members, elected deputies between 2012 and 2019, have also been sentenced: Yanis Lagós, Yorgos Germenís, Ilías Panagótaros, Artemis Mathiopoulos and Jrístos Papas. The eleven remaining members of their parliamentary group are also guilty of being part and participating in this criminal organization.

 

An overwhelming amount of evidence and testimonies have revealed what the hierarchical and paramilitary structure of the organization was like, as well as how it works.

 

For the 68 people charged, the rest of the long sentence considers that Yorgos Rupakiás was the murderer of rapper Pavlos Fyssas, and condemns 15 of the 17 participants in that violent attack, which occurred on the night of September 18, 2013 in Keratsini, in Piraeus. Also found guilty were all the participants in the attack on four Egyptian fishermen in the early morning of June 16 in Perama, near Piraeus, and in the attack on communist trade unionists, committed on September 12, 2013, while they were posting banners for a festival. The sentence considers three of them guilty of serious physical damage.

 

Only eleven defendants were in the courtroom, but none of the leaders. From early in the morning, there was Magda Fyssas, the mother of rapper Pavlos Fyssas, whose murder triggered the judicial investigation into Golden Dawn and its possible criminal component. When the sentence was known, all the protesters who were outside the Court of Appeals, around 20,000 people, began to applaud and Magda, excited, exclaimed: "Pavlo, we won."

Great demonstration

Since the morning, more than 20,000 people have gathered in the surroundings of the Court, including protesters from the left, anti-establishment, anarchists and other citizens, who wanted to express their rejection of Amancer Dorado and demand justice for his victims: minorities -immigrants, homosexuals, transsexuals- and left-wing people. Syriza President Alexis Tsipras and other politicians were in the vicinity.

 

After the reading of the sentences, a process that will last several days will begin, on the penalties and mitigating factors, with the intervention of the defense lawyers and the prosecutor, as well as the possible suspensions of execution of the sentences, which would mean that they would not enter in prison, but would have probation.