Golden Dawn trial prosecutor seeks lesser sentences over attacks on Egyptian fishermen, PAME unionists
After seeking the exoneration of the Golden Dawn hierarchy in the 2013 murder of rapper Pavlos Fyssas, the prosecutor in the trial against the neo-Nazi party on Wednesday also sought lesser charges for the defendants accused of attacking a group of Egyptian fishermen and unionists with the communist-affiliated PAME.
Prosecutor Adamantia Oikonomou said that the charges against five men accused of brutally attacking a group of Egyptian fishermen in their home in the Piraeus suburb of Perama in 2012 should be reduced from attempted murder with intent to the lesser crime of causing intentional grievous bodily harm, even though one of the four Egyptian national was badly injured in the incident.
Oikonomou argued that had the assailants been intent on committing murder, they would have done so. “They would have made certain to plan the outcome of their crime differently,” she told the bench.
On the attack on PAME members in 2013, Oikonomou also called for the charges against the four defendants to be reduced from attempted murder to causing grievous or actual bodily harm. In the case of the latter, she added, the defendants should be cleared under the new penal code.
“If someone wants to carry out a homicide, they can do so within seconds,” she said, citing a similar defense to that used in the attack on the Egyptian fishermen.
The prosecutor also asked that the court reduce weapons possession charges against Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos and former high-ranking officials Nikos Michos and Ioannis Lagos from a felony to a misdemeanor, while recommending that former party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris be cleared completely on this count.
