A year after the imprisonment of the leaders of the far-right Greek Golden Dawn party, the head of the local Nikaya branch, Georgos Patelis, was released.
A year ago, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for membership in a party that was declared criminal, linking it to the murder of rapper Pavlos Fissas. The Court of Appeal, with a five-member majority, granted the motion to release Patelis.
Patelis filed a lawsuit to suspend the sentence, citing the psychological reasons for his child, presenting a psychiatric report. His lawyer reportedly said that Patelis’s son had mental health problems.
The prosecutor who offered the release said that “there is no serious possibility of a new act, since a particular crime was committed for specific reasons, taking into account specific circumstances.” According to the newspaper “Efsyn“, The prosecutor also named his “exemplary prisoner.”
The Golden Dawn leadership was sentenced to lengthy prison terms in October 2020. The court imposed the maximum permissible punishment on the party leaders (an average of 13.5 years of strict regime) for leading a criminal organization accused of the murder of rapper Pavlos Fissas, as well as for hate crimes (several migrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan were beaten).
Eleven other former Golden Dawn MPs have been jailed for five to seven years for membership in a criminal organization. Giorgos Rupakias, who was already expelled from the party before the murder, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Pavlos Fyssas in the 2013 attack, which eventually led to a trial that became the de facto massacre of the party.
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