A Greek court on Monday ordered a prison to free a former MP from the Golden Dawn neo-Nazi party to allow him better access to cancer care, but said he must report regularly to the police.
Nikos Michos, a former senior cadre, was among dozens of Golden Dawn top members and followers sentenced to prison in October 2020 at a high-publicity trial following a five-year investigation sparked by the murder of an anti-fascist rapper.
An appeals court ruled that Michos, serving a six-year sentence for belonging to a “criminal organisation”, should be given leave from Domokos prison on health grounds.
The court said Michos’s release was contingent on him remaining on Greek territory and checking in at a police station twice a month.
Michos’s lawyer said the former neo-Nazi deputy could not access the necessary medical check-ups or treatment in jail.
Michos, a farmer, had told his constituents on the island of Evia that the country had been run by a “parliamentary junta” since 1974, the year in which a seven-year army dictatorship collapsed.
Upon his conditional release from a first prison stint in 2013, he hissed to reporters: “Only with bullets can you stop us.”
He later broke with Golden Dawn and shed light into its secretive inner workings at the trial.
Golden Dawn, a xenophobic and anti-Semitic organisation, existed on the fringes of Greek politics until the country’s 2010 debt crisis.
It capitalised on public anger over immigration and austerity reforms, garnering sufficient support to enter parliament for the first time in 2012, with a total of 18 seats.
Black-clad supporters of the openly fascist organisation took to roaming the streets of Athens, beating up opponents and immigrants with chants of “Blood, honour, Golden Dawn”.
After the assassination of anti-racism campaigner and rapper Pavlos Fyssas, party leader Nikos Michaloliakos and many of the party’s MPs were detained for 18 months — the legal maximum — in a high-security prison near the capital.
They were given conditional release from 2013 onwards pending trial.
Before that legal process could get underway, Golden Dawn fielded candidates for the 2015 parliamentary elections, emerging as the third most powerful political force in the country.
Five years later — after a trial beset by multiple delays, strikes and procedural questions — the party leadership and prominent ex-lawmakers were handed lengthy prison terms for membership of a criminal organisation responsible for violence and murder.
