ATHENS, Greece
Two prominent Greek far right opposition party figures, imprisoned since 2013, have been released, the local press said late Friday.
Nikos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn’s secretary-general and Yiannis Lagos, the party’s Member of Parliament, who were in custody since September 2013, were both released.
Six members of the Golden Dawn, which some critics describe as a Neo Nazi group, had been charged with allegedly leading and participating in a “criminal organization,” a reference to their party, in 2013 and were taken into custody.
Another Golden Dawn Member of Parliament, Christos Pappas, is also expected to get a conditional release on March 29, when his 18-month period of imprisonment expires.
The fate of the other three members remains unclear. Among them is Golden Dawn’s spokesperson Ilias Kasidiaris, who ran for the post of mayor of Athens in 2014 and won 16.1 percent of the votes.
Michaloliakos’s release comes at the end of his 18-month maximum detention period for holding an individual without trial. However, the Appeals Court Justices' Council ruled that the Golden Dawn leader would remain under house arrest. He would be allowed to attend the parliament's proceedings, but would be banned from leaving the country. The council accepted the Appeals Prosecutor Ioannis Provataris’ recommendation on his release conditions, with the exception of a 125,000 euro bail.
Meanwhile, Lagos would be expected to report to a police station twice a month.
Michaloliakos is a former member of nationalist youth organization Ethniki Politiki Enosis (National Political Union), led by former military dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, who ruled the country from 1967 to 1974.
Golden Dawn was formed in 1980, but was not registered as a political party until 1993. Its political breakthrough came in the 2012 elections when it received 6.92 percent of the vote, making it Greece's fifth largest political group and enabling it to enter parliament for the first time. It then took 9.4 percent in 2014 European elections, giving it three seats in the European Parliament.
Golden Dawn got 6.31 percent of votes in the Jan. 25, national elections, giving them 17 seats in the parliament. Its rise coincided with the European economic crisis that saw Greece suffer tremendous recession, job losses and budget cuts, which led to a bailout from European Union partners and strict austerity measures.
George Kratsas, a political commentator, told The Anadolu Agency after the Greek elections that Golden Dawn supporters never seemed to be troubled by the party's Neo-Nazi ideology, primarily due to a lack of understanding of the consequences of allowing extremist groups in a country's political life (as opposed to a lack of knowledge of past Nazi crimes). "Their strong appeal, moreover", he reported "does not appear to have faded not even after records of murders committed by Golden Dawn members, nor by the imprisonment of their leaders.”
