On Wednesday 4 June a Greek court sentenced a 23-year-old admirer of a local neo-Nazi group to 10 years in prison for the stabbing last year of a high school student with whom he was arguing about politics. Agence France-Presse reports that the first-instance verdict was immediately appealed.
The convicted assailant will remain in custody until his appeal hearing. The man denies having any ties to the right-wing extremist party Golden Dawn; he stabbed the 17-year-old victim last January in front of his school in the Paleo Faliro quarter in southern Athens.
Several Golden Dawn MPs, including party chair Nikolaos Michaloliakos, are facing charges of membership in a criminal organization. They were arrested in connection with the murder of a left-wing activist who was a popular singer in Greece last September.
The MPs have denied any culpability for the murder and have called the charges politically motivated due to Golden Dawn’s rising popularity among Greeks. The party confirmed its political position in the recent elections to the European Parliament, where it ended up in third place, just as it has during the past two elections to the Greek Parliament.
