Judges and Golden Dawn Trial

The panel of three judges in the five-and-a-half-year Golden Dawn trial were in the final stages of determining sentences on Tuesday night after convicting the 68 defendants a week ago. They had heard the sentencing proposal of state prosecutor Adamantia Economou and representations from lawyers for the members of the neonazi party convicted of crimes including murder, attempted murder, and membership and direction of a mafia-type organisation. Ms Economou, whose role is to represent the state not the victims in the process, proposed sentences ranging from life imprisonment for Giorgos Roupakias for the 2013 murder of anti-racist rapper Pavlos Fyssas; through 13 years for Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos and six other “directors of the criminal organisation”; to seven years for the “members of the criminal organisation.” Other proposed sentences included six to 10 years for those guilty of the attempted murder of Egyptian fisherman Abouzid Embarak in 2012. Thanasis Kampagiannis, an anti-fascist lawyer acting for the fisherman, said of the proposals: “As expected, the prosecutor’s sentences are less than the maximum provided for. “The maximum for directing a criminal organisation is 15 years. Membership — 10 years. Conspiracy to murder — 15 years. And so on. So these proposals are consciously low sentences, especially for the individual crimes.” Victims’ lawyers and anti-fascist campaigners were urging the court today afternoon to reject Ms Economou’s proposal and instead to deliver maximum sentences in line with what is now majority public feeling in Greece and with the gravity of crimes going back many years. The court did that last week when it convicted the defendants, spurning the prosecutor’s proposal for large-scale acquittals. Particularly disturbing is Ms Economou’s recommendation of sentences of just six to 10 months for the assault upon communist activists of the PAME trade union organisation when three years may be imposed. This touches on a political storm this week. The centre-right New Democracy government is claiming credit for breaking Golden Dawn and that the left is responsible for its rise through the anti-Establishment movement against austerity earlier this decade. But when lawyers acting for the trade unionists called an MP from each of the parliamentary parties to give evidence against Golden Dawn, the only witness to refuse the summons was the one from New Democracy. The party is now home to several former MPs of the far-right party LAOS that was a precursor to the neonazis entering parliament in 2012. At that time, then New Democracy prime minister Antonis Samaras established back-channel communications with Golden Dawn to bring them into a hard-right bloc. In this week of the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Athens by the partisan forces from Nazi occupation, the Greek establishment says there can be no place for “fans of Nazism” in the country. But the trial has touched on the networks of collaboration and sympathy with Golden Dawn on the wider right and in parts of the state. In determining sentences, the judges will also have to decide how strongly they signal that the mechanisms that have incubated the fascist right for decades must finally be torn out.