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Neonazi leaders locked up despite prosecutor's pleas

THE entire leadership of the neonazi Golden Dawn party was jailed yesterday after an Athens court rejected pleas by the state prosecutor to suspend the sentences handed down earlier this month.

Following the ruling, party leader Nikos Michaloliakos and five other top members, Christos Pappas, Ilias Kasidiaris, Giorgos Germenis,  Ilias Panagiotaros and Artemis Matthaiopoulos, were formally arrested and taken to prison.

MEP Ioannis Lagos, a former Golden Dawn membe who was also sentenced at the end of the historic trial earlier this month, remains in Brussels, but there have been demands for him to be stripped of his EU parliamentary immunity and deported. He has vowed to fight extradition to Greece.

Just 12 of the 51 neonazis who received jail terms had them suspended, despite the best efforts of state prosecutor Adamantia Econonomou. They have been issued with travel bans and are required to report to the police twice a week.

The sentences were passed after they were found guilty of leading a criminal organisation responsible for a range of serious offences, including murder and attempted murder, in what is seen as the most important trial of fascists since Hitler’s lieutenants faced justice at Nuremburg in the aftermath of World War II.

Mr Michaloliakos told journalists that he would be vindicated by history and that he was “proud that they are sending me to prison for my ideas.”

The outcome was welcomed as a victory for Greece’s anti-fascist movement after years of struggle.

Lawyers representing Greek communists and trade unionists of the All-Workers Militant Front (Pame) said the imprisonment of most of the neonazis had delivered justice to their clients and the victims of Golden Dawn.

However, they warned against complacency, noting that the roots of fascism are deeply embedded in the capitalist system.

“Our workers and our people must intensify their struggle to isolate fascism everywhere, in every place of work and education, in every neighbourhood, targeting the very system of capitalist exploitation that gives birth to and nourishes it,” a statement said.

Syriza leader and former Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said: “Today's decision on the Golden Dawn criminal gang is a historic event for Greece and Europe.

“Greek justice, in an absolute and indisputable way, puts an end to the action of a criminal organisation that bled, terrorised and murdered in the name of the most inhuman ideology that humanity has ever known.”

Thanks to the court’s decisions, “an entire nation is proud again,” Mr Tsipras added.

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