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ATHENS: A Greek court found the leaders of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn guilty of running a criminal organisation on Wednesday at the end of a historic trial that was hailed by the prime minister as a victory for democracy.
The judgement in an Athens court came as police and anti-fascist demonstrators clashed outside the courthouse, on the sidelines of a large protest of some 15,000 people.
After a trial lasting over five years, presiding judge Maria Lepenioti said Golden Dawn founder and leader Nikos Michaloliakos and other senior members were guilty of running a criminal organisation.
“Democracy won today,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised address, adding that the ruling ended a “traumatic” cycle in Greek public life.
President Katerina Sakellaropoulou said Wednesday’s “historic” ruling “confirmed that democracy and its institutions will always be able to overcome any attempt to undermine them”.
Among those convicted was independent European parliamentarian Yiannis Lagos, who defected from the party last year; the party’s former spokesman Ilias Kassidiaris who has formed a new far-right party; and a dozen other senior party members elected to parliament in 2012 at the height of Golden Dawn’s influence. None of the party’s senior members were present in court.
Michaloliakos and other senior cadres convicted on the criminal organisation charge face jail sentences of between five and 15 years.
In a Twitter post, Michaloliakos said he would “fight to the end” to overturn his conviction. The sentences are to be announced in separate hearings.
Prosecution lawyers said that the convicts would only be arrested once the court has decided whether their sentences should be suspended pending their appeals.
Hundreds of police were deployed at the courthouse, a few kilometres from the historic centre of the capital, barring the entrance with a wall of police vans. Anti-fascist protests were also held in other Greek cities.
The prosecutions were sparked by the late-night murder of 34-year-old anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013.
He was chased down by a mob of Golden Dawn members and stabbed to death in front of a cafe in the western Athens suburb of Keratsini.
“Pavlos, you did it,” the rapper’s mother Magda shouted outside the courthouse after the verdict was announced, her hands raised in triumph. She had attended most of the trial’s 453 sessions.
His killer, former truck driver Yiorgos Roupakias, had confessed to the crime, but the attack sparked outrage and the charges that Golden Dawn was a paramilitary-style organisation that used beatings, intimidation and murder as tactics — all with the knowledge of senior party members. Also convicted on Wednesday, Roupakias faces a life sentence.
Main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras earlier on Wednesday had called for the conviction of a group that had “poisoned society with hatred”.