The primary defendent in the closely-watched Golden Dawn trial on Wednesday was handed down a life sentence for fatally stabbing an anti-fascist rapper in September 2013, the crime that shocked Greece and sparked a massive police and prosecutorial investigation into the extremist party, leading to a five-and-a-half-year trial.
Giorgos Roupakis was convicted last week of stabbing Pavlos Fyssas in the middle of the road in a Piraeus-area working class district, using the pretext of a football-related disturbance to slain the victim.
Although the sentence is the maximum allowed under Greece’s penal code, the correctional framework in the country usually allows inmates, even ones convicted in heinous crimes, to seek parole after 15 to 20 years.
Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avgi) founder and president Nikos Mihaloliakos was handed a 13-year sentence for running and participating in a criminal organization. Another six of his top lieutenants, all former deputies in Greece’s Parliament, were handed down the same sentence.
Other former GD deputies convicted of membership in a criminal organization, but not of running the latter, were handed sentences of six to seven years. It’s this group of defendants that trial analysts believe may avoid jail time.
A group of GD cadres convicted of being accomplices of Roupakias on the evening of the murder were handed six to seven-year sentences and separate sentences for membeship in a criminal organization. Roupakias was given a separate 10-year sentence for his involvement in a criminal organization.
The next stage in the marathon trial, and under Greece’s more complex judicial system, is for the three-justice panel to decide which, if any, of the sentences handed down will have a suspended nature – something that, however, is judged as very rare when dealing with felonies involving homicide and running criminal organizations.
The sentences for running and participating in a criminal organization could have been lengthier for the GD leadership, if not for fast-track legislative ratification of penal code revisions by the then leftist SYRIZA government, days before that party lost a snap July 2019 election.
