A Greek court has sentenced the leadership of the Golden Dawn movement to 13 years in prison, imposing the near-maximum penalty for running a criminal organisation blamed for numerous violent hate crimes.
Presiding judge Maria Lepenioti read out the sentences against Nikos Michaloliakos and other former lawmakers on Wednesday.
The landmark ruling follows a five-year trial of dozens of top officials, members and supporters of Golden Dawn, an organisation founded as a neo-Nazi group in the 1980s that rose to become Greece’s third-largest political party during a major financial crisis in the previous decade.
The court handed down 13-year jail terms to six former lawmakers, including Mihaloliakos.
Other former lawmakers were sentenced to 5-7 years in prison for being members of a criminal group. The court will decide later this week if any of the sentences can be suspended.
As well as Michaloliakos, the party's founder – who received an additional one year for illegal possession of a weapon – the court also sentenced five former members of his inner circle to prison terms on the criminal organisation charge.
They included current independent European Parliament member Ioannis Lagos.
Greek judicial authorities must send a request to the European Parliament for Lagos' immunity to be lifted.
Golden Dawn's top figures were arrested in 2013, after the killing of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas by a party supporter prompted huge protests across Greece and led to a government crackdown on the party. Police found unlicensed weapons and Nazi flags in the homes of party members.
On Wednesday, the court also imposed a life sentence and 10 years in jail to Golden Dawn member Yiorgos Roupakias for the murder of Fyssas.
The Golden Dawn trial, which began in 2015, has been described as one of the most important in Greece's political history.
More than 50 defendants were convicted of crimes ranging from running a criminal organisation, murder and assault to illegal weapons possession.
During the trial, prosecutors told the court that Michaloliakos – a Holocaust denier and former protege of Greek dictator Georgios Papadopoulos – ran his party under a military-style hierarchy modelled on Hitler's Nazi party, with himself as leader for over three decades.
A search of party members' homes in 2013 uncovered firearms and other weapons, as well as Nazi memorabilia.
Golden Dawn entered parliament for the first time in 2012 at the peak of the crisis on a fiercely anti-immigrant platform, tapping into Greeks' anger over painful austerity measures and what many saw as a corrupt and cosy political establishment.
It failed to win a single seat in last year's parliamentary election.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
