Golden Dawn trial resumes with Fyssas family lawyer’s closing address
The long-running trial over the alleged criminal action of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn (GD) resumed on Wednesday after the December holiday break, with one of the lawyers of the family of murdered antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas making her closing statement.
Chrysa Papadopoulou sought to rebut the argument of the prosecution last December that Golden Dawn's leadership and other high-ranking officials should be acquitted of charges of running a criminal organization, and that Giorgos Roupakias, the man arrested for the murder of Fyssas, acted alone, saying the victim was a target.
“Roupakias did not act alone, was not arrested alone, nor was he a random visitor of the Golden Dawn offices. He was a member of the five-member council at the Nikea [GD] branch,” Papadopoulou told the Criminal Appeals Court in Athens.
“That night he arrived at the scene of the murder following the Golden Dawn convoy,” she said, citing a phone call from the local branch leader to former GD MP Yiannis Lagos on the night of the killing.
Papadopoulou also said there is no doubt that an “attack battalion was activated” on the night of 18 September 2013, noting that it is irrelevant whether a direct order was given from GD's hierarchy.
“The court is not examining whether there was an order because there is no charge of instigation and we are not examining whether [GD leader Nikos] Michaloliakos or Lagos had ordered the killing of Fyssas,” she said.
Papadopoulou argued that, if Roupakias had not been arrested, GD would have benefitted from Fyssas' killing because it wanted to show that it controls the district of Keratsini, where the murder took place.
Before the holiday recess last December, prosecutor Adamantia Oikonomou argued in court that the murder of Fyssas was not premeditated and recommended the conviction only of Roupakias for willful murder and the exoneration of the remaining suspects. She also argued that there was no evidence Roupakias had acted on the orders of the Golden Dawn leadership.
