Court Sentences Leaders of Greece's Golden Dawn to Prison

[KWR65]

The neo-fascist party’s leaders were convicted of running a criminal organization, and some of its members were found guilty of acts of violence.

ATHENS — An Athens court sentenced the leadership of Greece’s Golden Dawn party to 13 years in prison on Wednesday, a week after declaring the neo-fascist party a criminal organization in a landmark verdict that wrapped up one of the most important political trials in the country’s modern history.

Last week, the court convicted the party leaders of crimes related to a campaign of attacks against migrants and leftist critics in 2012 and 2013. At the end of a trial that lasted more than five years, the party was tied to a string of attacks, including the fatal stabbing in 2013 of a left-wing rapper, Pavlos Fyssas.

Giorgos Roupakias, a party member convicted of murdering Mr. Fyssas, received the harshest sentence, life plus 10 years. The court could still suspend some of the sentences.

The convictions were widely seen in Greece as a final blow to Golden Dawn, which failed to re-enter Parliament in general elections last year as the trial gradually eroded its popularity. And the outcome has already spurred political upheaval.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/world/europe/greece-golden-dawn-sentencing.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

[malaise]

1. Waiting to see their criminal friends in the US face

a similar fate