Chryssi Avghi / Golden Dawn
Chryssi Avghi was founded in the 1980s as a neo-Nazi organisation and rose to become Greece’s third largest party in parliament during the country’s decade-long financial crisis. Golden Dawn was a criminal organization that perpetrated crimes, masquerading itself as a political party inside parliament. The party rose from obscurity to enter parliament for the first time in 2012 on an anti-immigrant and anti-austerity agenda. The party's banner features a swastika-like emblem and its leader has denied the Holocaust took place - though the group says it is not neo-Nazi.
In September 2013 the government launched a crackdown on far-right party Golden Dawn, an increasingly vocal element of post-bailout life in Greece. Meanwhile, austerity continues to bite, with wage cuts and public sector layoffs increasingly prevalent. Greece's parliament voted to lift the immunity of six lawmakers from the far-right Golden Dawn party on Wednesday, paving the way for a deeper investigation into accusations the movement's members were involved in criminal offenses.
The killing of a left-wing rapper on September 17, which prosecutors said was carried out by a Golden Dawn supporter, triggered anti-fascist protests across the country. Police started investigations into whether the party was involved in a string of violent attacks including the killing, and Greece's top court charged six Golden Dawn lawmakers last month with belonging to a criminal group. On Wednesday, lawmakers overwhelmingly backed prosecutors' request to lift the immunity of two people from that group - and four other Golden Dawn lawmakers.
On 17 October 2014 a Greek prosecutor recommended dozens of members of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement, including 18 lawmakers, stand trial on a range of charges. Isidoros Doyiakos delineated the criminal activities of the group, including the murder of left-wing rapper Pavlos Fyssas, in a 700-page report released Thursday following a year-long investigation. The investigation was launched after the murder of Fyssas. Doyiakos described the openly xenophobic Golden Dawn in the report as a hierarchical organization that aimed "to propagate and impose its political beliefs and theories through violence." Doyiakos recommended that Golden Dawn leader Nikos Nichaloliakos, who was arrested following Fyssas' murder and remained in custody, be included among the party members facing criminal charges.
Golden Dawn ceased to exist as the separate organization in December 2005, having merged into the Patriotic Alliance (?at???t??? S?µµa??a), which used different symbols (Wikipedia). In January 2007, the Patriotic Alliance ceased to exist and in March same year, Golden Dawn announced its re-activation. Since then, the website of Golden Dawn has been regularly updated. The trial over Greece’s far right Golden Dawn party leaders started 20 April 2015 in the absence of the main defendants. A total of 69 people were charged with operating as a criminal gang and carrying out a string of attacks against their opponents and migrants. The politicians denied all the charges. Golden Dawn founder Nikos Michaloliakos and 12 MPs on trial failed to show up. They were represented by their lawyers, who gave no explanation for their clients’ absence. The trial was adjourned until May 7. Hundreds of anti-fascism protesters as well as party supporters rallied outside the court.
Golden Dawn had 16 lawmakers in parliament before it was dissolved ahead of the election. Despite the charges, the party came third in the January 25 general election, but the vote for the party fell from 7 percent to 6.3, securing 17 seats in Greece’s 300-seat parliament. The constant interruptions from the defense side struck many as a deliberate delaying tactic to bore the public and the media into losing interest. It was obvious that the strategy of Golden Dawn is to have as little publicity as possible. There have been incidents inside the courtroom that reveal that this to be the case, threats against journalists and photographers and even physical violence against a journalist.
By May 2019 Greece's ruling Syriza party was heading for a major defeat in not only the European, but also local municipal elections, and that could even lead to snap national elections. Disgruntled voters sided with the country's Nazi-inspired Golden Dawn party which was expected to make solid gains in the polls. But the vote share for Greece's 'Golden Dawn' was down from 9%. The far-right Golden Dawn, Greece's third-largest party during the height of the financial crisis, failed to make the 3% threshold to enter parliament.
Preliminary investigations found that the party operated as a paramilitary organization with orders passed from the central leadership to local groups to carry out attacks against migrants, often leading to serious injury. The defense had claimed that there was insufficient evidence to prove this connection. The party had hoped for the charges to be dropped, calling them an "unprecedented conspiracy" and for a resurgence in nationalist populism that would bring them back into parliament after having failed to reach the 3% threshold in the previous election.
A Greek court found neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn guilty of acting as a criminal organisation on 07 October 2020 in a landmark verdict in the marathon, five-year-long trial against the country’s extreme right-wing Golden Dawn party07 October 2020, with security tight and more than 15,000 people gathering in an anti-fascist rally outside. Thousands of police officers were stationed around the Athens courthouse as the verdict was read and tear gas and water cannons were used to disperse crowds. Over 10,000 protesters gathered to take part in antifascist rallies outside.
The 68 defendants in the trial included 18 former lawmakers from the party. The court has been assessing four cases rolled into one: the fatal stabbing of Greek rap singer Pavlos Fyssas, attacks on migrant fishermen, attacks on left-wing activists and whether Golden Dawn was operating as a criminal organisation.
Leaders of the Neo-Nazi party were sentenced to prison 14 October 2020 for running a criminal gang. The ruling is the culmination of a trial that had been described as one of the most important in Greece's political history. A Greek court on Wednesday handed a 13-year jail term to the leader of the neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn, Nikos Michaloliakos, for running a criminal organization under the guise of a political party. Six other former senior members were sentenced between 10 and 13 years on similar charges, and 11 former Golden Dawn lawmakers were sentenced to between five and seven years in prison for being members of a criminal group.
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