Greece’s Golden Dawn found guilty by courts

IN a landmark trial reckoning with the extreme far right, a Greek court has found Golden Dawn party leaders and lawmakers guilty of running a criminal organisation – an extraordinary rebuke of a party that had once clawed into the country’s mainstream.

Thousands of Greeks outside the courthouse cheered the ruling, which also included specific guilty findings for attacks on immigrants and the murder of an anti-fascist rapper.

The ruling all but cements the fall of Golden Dawn, a party that a decade ago had grown on the back of Greece’s financial and migrant crises and presaged the rise of other, less extreme European nationalist parties.

In the verdict, which followed a trial lasting more than five years, 18 top members of the party were found guilty of being part of a criminal organisation.

Seven, including the leader, Nikos Michaloliakos – who once claimed there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz – were found guilty of running a criminal organisation. They have not yet been sentenced.

Many outside observers had portrayed the trial as an example of a democratic country grappling with its most hardcore political faction. Greece is now governed by a centre-right party, and far-right sentiment has receded to the margins.

Founded in the 1980s, as late as 2009 the party had virtually no electoral support. But by 2012, amid debt crises and austerity measures, Golden Dawn was Greece’s third-largest party, holding 18 of the 300 seats in parliament.

It no longer holds any seats in parliament.

The violence examined during the trial mostly took place between 2010 and 2013. (© Washington Post)