'It's the silence that hurts most': joy and regret for witness in Golden Dawn trial

“Justice is so sweet,” smiled Javied Aslam. “And when you have waited so long, it is beautiful too.”

Among the key witnesses in the marathon trial of Golden Dawn, the head of Greece’s Pakistani community has experienced the rise and fall of Europe’s most violent neo-Nazi force closer than most. As the verdict came through, he punched the air in joy.

But Aslam will always have one regret: that he and other migrant leaders in Greece did not speak up before. “It’s the silence that hurts most,” he admitted. “If we had dared to speak, if Greeks had dared to speak, perhaps none of this would have happened.”

Instead, a reign of terror was allowed to develop as the unrepentant fascists took the law into their own hands, sowing fear and terror. Immigrants were beaten as they walked the streets; migrant community offices were brazenly attacked; shops and underground mosques were firebombed.

“Nobody knows how many murders there really were,” Aslam told the Guardian. “What we do know is there were more than 900 attacks, most in Athens. People were dragged off buses by men dressed in black Golden Dawn T-shirts and beaten up at bus stops. Many were stabbed. I have all the details in my notebooks.”

More than 600 of the alleged assaults were against Pakistanis. As the investigations unfolded, Greek law enforcers were revealed to have strong links with Golden Dawn. “The police would always blame the violence on [inter-ethnic] infighting,” Aslam said. “We now know why.”

The racist violence became so prevalent in the two years prior to Golden Dawn entering the Greek parliament in 2012 – on the back of popular anger over EU austerity policies – that an umbrella network of 46 civil society organisations was formed to record the crimes.

Established at the behest of the UN refugee agency and the Greek National

Commission for Human Rights, RVRN documented attacks well into 2013. The uptick was linked to extremists feeling emboldened by the party’s presence in parliament. “The reported incidents may just be the tip of the iceberg,” said Garyfallia Anastasopoulou, an assistant coordinator at the network.

In January 2013 a Pakistani migrant worker, Shahzad Lukman, 27, was fatally stabbed by two Golden Dawn militants on a motorcycle in Athens. The assailants received life sentences but these were commuted and both were released from jail last year. In a search of their homes, police discovered Golden Dawn flyers and a cache of weapons.

The rightwing extremists didn’t stop at immigrants, however. Communist trade unionists were targeted, as were activists on the anarchist and leftist fringe. Same-sex couples also reported being attacked as they walked outdoors. But it would be the murder of the Greek musician Pavlos Fyssas by a self-confessed member of the group that would prove to be the tipping point in September 2013. The fatal stabbing of the 34-year-old rapper, a popular voice on the anti-fascist scene, triggered unprecedented condemnation forcing the then conservative-led government, which had previously appeared to turn a blind eye to the violence, to finally take action.

A nine-month investigation eventually led to the prosecution of Golden Dawn’s leadership including its MPs. “There was a significant decrease in the attacks after Fyssas’ death,” added Anastasopoulou. “Especially after the prosecution and as the trial got underway.” More than seven years later the monstrous neo-Nazi party is no more. Ejected from parliament in general elections last year, the organisation whose emblem bore an uncanny resemblance to the Swastika, has been eviscerated by defections and factional infighting. Wednesday’s court decision that its leaders masqueraded as a political force to operate an underground criminal organisation fuelled by the ideology of National Socialism, will ensure prison sentences that have yet to be announced.

Greeks of all political hues are now in no doubt that the far-rightists, the only unreconstructed fascist group to strut the stage of any modern European state, are where they belong: in the dustbin of history. The court judgment was met with jubilation by thousands who had gathered before the verdict chanting “Nazis belong to prison”. Many broke into applause as news of the decision reached the street.

“But there are lessons to be learned,” said Aslam, who heads the country’s now much diminished Pakistani community. “We were more than 100,000 people when I first came here in 1986. Now we are less than half that number because so many have left Greece, partly out of fear. Ten years is a long time to wait for this day. But there are victims who cannot remember and are not with us today. We must remember them. And we must never forget these crimes.”