The convicted leader and founder of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party, Nikos Mihaloliakos, has been released from prison on parole, sparking fierce public outrage.
Mihaloliakos, 66, and other members of Golden Dawn were sentenced in 2020 following a marathon, five-year trial for running a criminal gang linked to hate crimes during the country’s economic crisis.
Mihaloliakos, who was serving a 13-year sentence in a prison in the Greek countryside, had been temporarily treated in hospital in recent months before returning to prison, police officials said.
Restrictions include a ban on travelling outside the greater Athens area and an obligation to regularly report to a police station near his house, the semi-state Athens News Agency reported.
Mihaloliakos’ request for parole was approved by a board of judges, who took into account his prison labour and his health issues.
Magda Fyssa, the mother of slain anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, expressed shock and disappointment over the release of the neo-Nazi leader.
Ms. Fyssa lashed out at the judicial system, questioning the rationale behind Michaloliakos’ release, saying he has shown no remorse. She said the judges who ordered the release do not share the grief of those who have lost loved ones to violence.
She noted the irony of Michaloliakos being able to spend Easter at home, while the victims’ families continue to deal with their loss.
Golden Dawn, whose emblem resembles a swastika and whose members, including Mihaloliakos, were often seen giving Nazi-style salutes, entered the Greek parliament in 2012 at the peak of Greece’s debt crisis, seizing on public anger over painful austerity. The party, however, failed to win a single parliamentary seat in 2019 elections that brought the conservative New Democracy party to power.
Golden Dawn began to unravel in September 2013, when a party supporter was arrested for the killing of Pavlos Fyssas, a musician and rapper aligned to the political left.