The Greek justice barred a neo-Nazi party from going to elections

2023-05-03 03:30:00

The Greek Supreme Court on Tuesday barred the far-right Greeks for Fatherland party, founded by former leader of the banned neo-Nazi Golden Dawn group Ilias Kasidiaris, from running in elections on May 21.

In an opinion taken by a majority of 9 votes to one, the highest court ruled that Kasidiaris’s party, which is serving a heavy prison sentence, will not be able to present candidates in the elections.

The banning of a party in an election represents a novelty since the restoration of democracy in Greece in 1974 after seven years of dictatorship by the colonels, the AFP news agency reported.

Kasidiaris was a representative for Golden Dawn from 2012 to 2019 and had recently announced his intention to run for a seat of deputy in the constituency of the center of Athens.

In 2020, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for operating a criminal gang, after a historic trial in which 15 former neo-Nazi deputies sat on the bench. Local media described it as “the biggest trial against fascists since Nuremberg.”

In February, Parliament adopted an amendment to the 2021 electoral law, stating that a political party cannot participate in elections if its leadership has been convicted of belonging to a criminal organization. The final decision rested with the Supreme Court.

Golden Dawn is an outlawed Greek political party, neo-Nazi and fascist in ideology.

Before that ban, Kassidiaris, who created his own party months before his imprisonment in October 2020, had denounced “an unimaginable coup against democracy” by leaving “hundreds of thousands of voters” out of the vote. game.