Former Golden Dawn MP and party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos testifies before the Athens criminal appeal court in November 2019.
Athens, Greece (CNN) -
Leaders of Greece's neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn were found guilty Wednesday of forming and running a criminal organization under the cloak of a political party.
Many hail this historic decision as a victory for democracy and human rights.
After a marathon trial that lasted five and a half years, a court in Athens found that crimes committed by members of Golden Dawn, including murder, attempted murder, assault and possession of weapons, were not actions of individuals acting on initiative. own.
Instead, they were directly planned and ordered by a party leadership that used violence to eradicate those it perceived as enemies.
Eighteen former party legislators, including leader Nikos Michaloliakos - who has denied the Holocaust and founded Golden Dawn in the 1980s as a neo-Nazi organization - were among the culprits on Wednesday.
Individual sentences will be announced in the coming days.
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Riot police used water cannons during clashes with anti-fascist protesters after the Golden Dawn leadership was found guilty in Athens on Wednesday.
Demonstrations against Golden Dawn
There was a heavy police presence around the court on Wednesday when left-wing parties, trade unions, and anti-fascist and human rights groups organized demonstrations to coincide with the verdict.
Protesters and riot police clashed after the ruling.
Police said a peaceful crowd of at least 20,000 dispersed, but minutes after the verdict was announced, a smaller group of around 600 people attacked the officers with rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis tweeted that it was a "truly historic day for Greece, democracy and the rule of law."
"After the Greek people removed the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party from Parliament in the last elections, today the Greek justice system condemned its leaders for operating as a criminal organization," he added.
The leaders of Golden Dawn have denied the charges from the start, claiming they are victims of political persecution.
The president of the Supreme Court Maria Lepenioti (center) announces the verdict in the trial of the members of Golden Dawn.
Dozens of other people, party members and suspected associates, have been convicted on charges ranging from murder to perjury.
Most of these are linked to violent attacks between 2012 and 2013. They include the deadly stabbing of popular anti-fascist hiphop singer Pavlos Fyssas and attacks on immigrants and left-wing activists.
The decision concludes more than 450 days in court and hundreds of testimonies and hours of data collected from detainees' cell phones and laptops.
These include photos of Golden Dawn recruits, on training grounds, posing with assault weapons and saluting in Nazi style.
"There is a clear and unequivocal message in this historic case, that hate crimes will no longer be tolerated, [the decision] may also have a significant impact on preventing racist violence in the future," said Nils Muiznieks, director of Amnesty International Europe before the verdict.
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Riot police try to avoid flames from a gasoline bomb dropped by protesters Wednesday.
The trial against Golden Dawn
Thanassis Kambagiannis, a lawyer on the prosecution team, has described the trial as "the largest court hearing of the Nazis since Nuremberg."
The trial began in April 2015, with about 70 members of Golden Dawn indicted under the so-called "mafia clause."
Among those present were victims of racist violence, some with knife scars, waving banners with the words: “They are not innocent.
Nazis in jail.
Rich in symbolism, the verdict offers a moment of catharsis in a country still reeling from the wounds of its recent economic and political past, an upheaval that pushed voters to extremes.
The verdict is “a strong institutional rampart against violence.
It shows that democracy has instruments and institutions that can punish organized totalitarian practices, undemocratic and criminal actions, ”said Lamprini Rori, Professor of Politics at the University of Exeter in the UK.
"Only for Greeks"
To anchor its foothold, Golden Dawn focused on "the common man," engaging with communities and occupying the space that the struggling state could not fill.
With more people relying on food stamps, the party created food distribution networks and later blood banks, but these, like everything the party offered, were strictly for 'Greeks only'.
The fervently anti-immigrant party openly used poisonous rhetoric against foreigners, with leadership figures saying they were "looking for ways to clean up the stench."
Golden Dawn's words and actions became more overtly extreme as his popularity grew.
Reports of street violence, primarily against immigrants, but also against political opponents and members of the LGBTQ community, became frequent.
The torchlight rallies grew, and supporters raised their arms in fascist salutes.
The far-right parties in Europe quickly distanced themselves.
Instead, the Golden Dawn brand, with a logo that closely resembles the swastika and slogans almost identical to those once used by the Hitler Youth, became increasingly attractive to far-rightists from around the world who flocked to Greece to learn from the party's methods.
Among them was Andrew Anglin, editor of The Daily Stormer, one of America's largest neo-Nazi websites, who attended the Golden Dawn meetings.
The beginning of the end of Golden Dawn
The murder of 34-year-old anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, who was stabbed by a Golden Dawn sympathizer in Athens in September 2013, sparked a stir among the Greek public.
After that there was a quick crackdown, and the party leader and legislators were arrested and placed in preventive detention.
They denied any direct link to the Fyssas murder and other attacks, and claimed to be victims of political persecution.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors argued that Golden Dawn operated as a paramilitary group and that the party leadership instigated violence.
Magda Fyssa, mother of murdered rapper Pavlos Fyssas, reacts in court after the October 7 verdict.
Despite the arrests, the popularity of Golden Dawn continued to rise, but its electoral base shifted from urban areas to other parts of the country, including islands struggling to cope with a large influx of immigrants and refugees.
The trial began in the spring of 2015, a few months after national elections that brought Greece's first far-left government to power and saw Golden Dawn take third place as the country unraveled into political dystopia.
The following year, more than 1 million migrants and refugees reached the shores of Europe via Greece, causing the largest refugee crisis in the history of the European Union.
A cautionary tale
Seven years after Fyssas's death, Golden Dawn is deflated and fragmented.
The victory of the center-right New Democracy party in the 2019 elections, the first since Greece pulled out of its bailout regime a year earlier, marked a clear break from years of incendiary populism and a return to mainstream politics.
For the first time since entering Parliament, Golden Dawn failed to win a single seat.
But worrying signs persist.
As prosecuting attorney Thanassis Kambagiannis explains, “The Greek constitution does not allow the outlawing of political parties.
This does not exist in the country's legal system.
And there is no law that prevents the founding of a new party.
The separatist Griegos por la Patria party, led by Ilias Kassidiaris, a prominent Golden Dawn figure who once slapped a leftist politician during a live TV show, is gaining traction over an anti-immigrant vote, according to a recent poll.
That is despite the fact that Kassidiaris is among the tried and now convicted.
Violence against immigrants and refugees linked to far-right groups has been reported on several occasions since the trial began, mainly on islands that are home to large immigrant camps.
To prevent extremism from resurfacing, Rori says, the issues that fuel extremism must be addressed.
"If the government's ability to handle immigration is low, this can eventually fuel electoral demand from anti-immigrant parties."
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