ATHENS (AFP) — A Greek appeals court on Wednesday upheld convictions for leaders and members of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn in a landmark trial over crimes committed at the height of the country’s economic crisis.

The court found the officials guilty of “running a criminal organization.” The presiding judge is yet to announce the punishments meted out to the more than 40 defendants, some of whom risk sentences of up to 15 years in prison.

The police minister at the time of the Golden Dawn arrests, now Defense Minister Nikos Dendias, welcomed the ruling as “a historic milestone for the Greek justice system and the rule of law in Greece.”

Crimes attributed to the group include the savage beating of a group of Egyptian fishermen in 2012 and the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in 2013.

More than 200 people rallied in front of the tribunal in a show of support for Fyssas, whose killer, Giorgos Roupakias, was again convicted of murder.

Senior prosecution lawyer Kostas Papadakis said Wednesday: “The criminal condemnation of the assault squads of the Nazi criminal organization is now final, and the sentences are expected in the coming days.”

The judge, Fotini Athanassiou, will this week be hearing defense pleas for sentence-mitigating factors.

Several defense lawyers on Wednesday stressed their clients’ prior clean records and the long duration of the case, now stretching into a 13th year.

Senior Golden Dawn cadres have always denied involvement in the attacks, which were carried out by the group’s so-called “assault squads.”

But in her closing arguments last month, prosecutor Kyriaki Stefanatou said the party’s founder and leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, had “complete control and knowledge of what was happening.”

She called the paramilitary-style group a “true child of Nazi ideology.”

Michaloliakos, a 68-year-old mathematician who has called the Holocaust a “lie,” was granted conditional release from prison last year on health grounds.

A former protege of Greek dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, he had been sentenced to 13-and-a-half years in a landmark trial in 2020 that took more than five years to finish.

The court at the time concluded that Golden Dawn was a criminal organization disguised as a political party.

Defendants in 2020 were convicted of crimes ranging from running a criminal organization, to murder and assault to illegal weapons possession.

One Golden Dawn lawmaker in 2013 had famously attempted to strike then Athens mayor Giorgos Kaminis for blocking a “Greeks-only” food handout organized by the party.

Senior Golden Dawn figures still behind bars include former European Parliament member Yiannis Lagos, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and extradited from Belgium in 2021 to serve a sentence of 13 years and eight months.

Lagos’s lawyer at the trial was far-right ideologue Constantinos Plevris, the father of Greece’s Migration Minister Thanos Plevris.

In 2022, Plevris senior caused an outcry by giving a fascist salute in court, and was later expelled by the Athens Bar Association, the body representing the capital’s lawyers.

Former party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris is also serving a sentence of 13 years and six months.

On Wednesday, his lawyer Vasso Pantazi insisted the muscled former commando, who had once struck a female Communist lawmaker in the face on live television, was “not dangerous.”

“He has taken first aid seminars, is following a postgraduate degree and has written five books,” she told the court.

“He is making a positive and beneficial contribution to society,” Pantazi said.

Kasidiaris’s influence among far-right circles is believed to have been instrumental in getting a new hardline party, the Spartans, elected to parliament in 2023.

The xenophobic and antisemitic organization created by Michaloliakos was for decades a fringe party, until Greece’s 2010 debt crisis.

In its early years, Golden Dawn glorified Adolf Hitler in its party publications, but later toned down its rhetoric, claiming instead to be nationalist.

The group capitalized on public anger over immigration and austerity cuts, entering parliament for the first time in 2012.

It remained in parliament until 2019.

At the height of its influence, it was the country’s third-biggest party, picking up around 400,000 votes.

It was considered to have significant support among police officers and even some senior Church officials, while priests and monks attended its rallies.

Michaloliakos accused mainstream parties of bankrupting the country, famously declaring in a 2012 speech to followers: “These hands may occasionally [give Nazi salutes], but they are clean hands. They have not stolen.”

At the original trial, prosecutors told the court that Michaloliakos ran his party under a military-style hierarchy modelled on Hitler’s Nazi party, with himself as leader for more than three decades.

A search of party members’ homes in 2013 uncovered firearms and other weapons, as well as Nazi memorabilia.

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