© Reuters/John KolesidisRiot policemen walk outside the Korydallos prison in Athens October 3, 2013.
The leader of Greece's Golden Dawn party was taken to a high-security prison Thursday pending his trial on criminal charges, as part of a major government crackdown on the neo-Nazi group.
Nikos Michaloliakos is the first Greek party leader to be put behind bars in at least three decades.
He was transferred to the Korydallos prison in west Athens on Thursday afternoon, hours after being charged with
running a criminal organisation.
The 56-year-old faces at least 10 years in jail if convicted. No trial date has been set yet.
His detention is the most high-profile development yet in efforts by Greek authorities to dismantle Golden Dawn -- which has 18 members in the 300-seat parliament -- after last month's murder of an anti-fascist musician by a self-confessed neo-Nazi provoked national outrage.
The second most powerful figure in Golden Dawn, Christos Pappas, was also taken into custody on Thursday charged with helping to run a criminal organisation, bringing the total number of MPs from the party in detention to three.
"This is the most dynamic treatment towards a neo-Nazi criminal organisation in European history, perhaps in world history," government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou told Antenna TV.
Golden Dawn was the country's third most popular party until last month's killing of hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas sparked street protests, putting pressure on Greek officials to take action against a group long accused of attacking immigrants, charges that it denies.
"The investigation does not stop here, it will be continued and expanded," Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Dendias told the
Eleftherotypia daily.
"We will get to the end, we will fight them everywhere."
Dozens of Golden Dawn supporters gathered outside the court late on Wednesday, carrying Greek flags and chanting "Blood, honour, Golden Dawn", as Michaloliakos -- a mathematician and former disciple of Greek dictator George Papadopoulos -- arrived to deliver his testimony.
Four other Golden Dawn lawmakers were on Wednesday charged with belonging to a criminal group, in the first ever indictment against neo-Nazi MPs in Greece.
Three were released pending trial while Yiannis Lagos was remanded in custody after police reportedly discovered he had spoken to members of a gang that ambushed Fyssas on the night he was killed.
Lagos was also moved to Korydallos prison on Thursday, along with a Golden Dawn district leader and a female police officer accused of aiding the group.
In total,
some two dozen people including six Golden Dawn lawmakers face charges ranging from attempted homicide and murder to illegal arms possession and belonging to a criminal organisation.
A large, complex legal battleMagistrates have compiled a large dossier on Golden Dawn, whose key figures the conservative-led government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras wants to see behind bars.
Golden Dawn denies all the accusations and says it is the victim of political persecution designed to stem its rise ahead of local elections next year.
The party's deputy leader Pappas on Thursday voiced defiance in the face of the crackdown.
"Golden Dawn will contest elections whenever they are held," Pappas shouted at reporters as he was led to hear the charges against him.
Once a fringe party, Golden Dawn capitalised on growing public discontent in a country hard hit by the economic crisis, and was first elected to parliament last year with nearly seven percent of the vote.By going after Golden Dawn, the government "is trying to convince some 400,000 Golden Dawn voters that they were wrong", political analyst Ilias Nikolakopoulos told AFP.
But he warned the group's supporters were "a very unpredictable electorate", noting that some Golden Dawn voters could be drawn to the far-left anti-austerity Syriza, Greece's main opposition party.
Investigations launched after Fyssas's September 18 murder uncovered
close ties between Golden Dawn and Greek police, something rights and migrant groups had warned about for years.
Legal observers say judges handling the Golden Dawn cases are facing a complex web of charges, and warn of a potentially lengthy legal process.
A Supreme Court report has linked Golden Dawn to
two murders, including the stabbing death of Fyssas,
three attempted murders and
numerous assaults.
Golden Dawn has been present in Greece for the past 30 years, collecting the ultra-right-wing leftovers of the military junta that ended in 1974, who were a mere 0,3% in every election until 2009. This organization was for the greatest part of it's existence bluntly nazi and satanic in ideology (as even the name itself refers straight back to the works of Alister Crowley), a fact they didn't have a problem to state themselves in their old manifestos, the ones they now pretend to refute under their new make-up.
After the manufactured 2009 debt crisis in Greece, the total loss of Greece's sovereignty to it's usurer banker-lenders and the unbearable austerity that followed, Golden Dawn became a useful tool for control. It was "washed" and "polished" by the ruling political and media system in order to divert and control the rightful anger of Greeks towards the treachery and misery they suffered. They were presented by the controlled Greek media as "angry patriots that will punish the corrupt government that betrayed Greeks, and clean Greece of immigrants who commit crimes and steal jobs". As the truth of the betrayal part was obvious to most Greeks, many people willingly played the useful idiot concerning their racist-hate ideology, and voted for them as an "anti-systemic" party of hard men, even known thugs in advance, who would be the only capable to deliver some form of punishment to the otherwise untouched and unpunished treacherous politicians, even if that was a thug's punch in the face inside the "parliament of shame". Anything seemed better than more impunity for people who fell for the new media image of Golden Dawn, or actually did not know, or even disregarded Golden Dawn's past nazi and satanic ideology for a piece of "revenge" for their plight...
Meanwhile, after the 2012 elections in Greece, a right-wing government was installed from the party of "New Democracy". Prime Minister Samaras, appointed many far-right lovers in his government, as himself too is a known far-right worshiper. So Golden Dawn was for his government a close "ideological relative", so it enjoyed almost full impunity to practice fascist violence in the streets and had close connections with the state and the police. Their violence would provide the excuse for ruthless policing and riot control, loss of civil rights, and other "extreme measures" to supposedly counter their deeds.
Golden Dawn is but the ultra-right hand of a murderous government, a false flag opponent. But the "hand" grew bolder and bolder, and it attracted too much negative attention after the cold blood murder of anti-fascist rap singer Fyssas. So before the mounting international and domestic pressure, PM Samaras decided to "burn" his army of thugs so as to present himself as a "keeper of the democracy and order" before the clashing fascists and anti-fascists that flooded the streets and "threatened political stability". Of course, after the orchestrated media show that presented him as a "guardian of stability and order" he now hopes that since the former voters of Golden Dawn are made aware that they voted for a criminal organization, they will be channeled back to his own failing and decadent party. He also plans to use Golden Dawn as an excuse to penalize any opposition to his policies by appealing to the "two extremes" theory that is manufactured to conveniently put him in the middle, while his close associates seem to do all they can to promote a new national division and even a replay of the civil war that haunted Greece after WW II and still remains a collective trauma.
From Greece....