A Greek court has ruled the country’s far-right Golden Dawn party was run as a criminal organisation, a landmark ruling that brings to a close a five-year trial that has gripped the country.
Seven former MPs from the far-right party, which at one point was the country’s third largest political force, including its leader Nikos Michaloliakos, were found guilty of leading a criminal organisation.
Eleven others were found guilty of the lesser charge of participating in a criminal organisation.
The court decision effectively bans Golden Dawn, which has seen its support at the ballot box evaporate in recent years.
Those like Michaloliakos convicted of leading the organisation face between five and 15 years in prison, while the others face sentences of up to 10 years.
A total of 68 defendants, 18 former MPs and the rest associates of the far-right party, have been on trial for four combined cases.
The court heard testimony on the 2013 fatal stabbing of Greek rap singer Pavlos Fyssas, attacks on Egyptian fishermen in 2012 and on left-wing activists in 2013, as well as evidence on the group’s criminal organisation.
The judges found Giorgos Roupakias, a Golden Dawn supporter, guilty of the 2013 slaying. Fifteen other defendants, none of whom were former lawmakers, were convicted as accomplices.
The evidence surrounding the spate of racist attacks against the Egyptian nationals, one of the men’s lawyers said, showed the assailants were “just a gang of knife-wielding thugs who took their orders from the top.”.
The far-right party, founded in the 1980s as a neo-Nazi organisation, gained political momentum attracting supporters with its xenophobic rhetoric at the height of Greece's decade-long debt crisis.
The Golden Dawn members, including Mihaloliakos, were not present in court on Wednesday. They were arrested in 2013, the first time that elected politicians had been detained in Greece since a military coup in 1967, and released after their pre-trial detention period expired.
Golden Dawn failed to win a single seat in last year's parliamentary election that brought the conservative New Democracy party to power.
As news of the guilty verdicts broke, cheers and celebrations erupted among the crowd of more than 15,000 people gathered in an anti-fascist rally outside the Athens courthouse.
More than 5,000 people held a similar rally in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
A small group among the crowd outside the court threw Molotov cocktails and stones at police, with authorities responding with tear gas and the use of a water cannon. It was not immediately clear why the group began throwing projectiles in the otherwise peaceful rally.
Outside the courthouse, Fyssas’ mother Magda Fyssa, who had attended nearly every court session over the last five years, raised her arms and shouted: “Pavlos did it. My son!”
Representatives of parties across the political spectrum, from the governing conservative New Democracy party to Greece’s Communist Party and the former governing left-wing Syriza party, were outside the courthouse.
