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| - Independent Greek MEP Ioannis Lagos, convicted last week in a landmark trial linked to the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, has a long history of aggression as a former party enforcer. Lagos, who faces up to 15 years in prison if the European Parliament lifts his immunity, on Monday called for the judges who convicted him to be replaced because of alleged bias. An independent member of the European Parliament since leaving Golden Dawn last year, Lagos caused controversy in January by ripping up a printout of the Turkish flag, arguing that Turkey was to blame for irregular migration into Greece. "Golden Dawn was never a criminal organisation, nor will it ever be. We always stood for the homeland and the nation," he said last year. Judges disagreed last week, finding the party's leaders guilty of running a criminal organisation. The sentences have yet to be issued. The former nightclub security guard has accused prosecutors of fabricating evidence and last week said he was convicted by a "scared team of little people carrying out orders and trampling on every sense of law". His lawyer Konstantinos Plevris, a Nazi sympathiser who has written an anti-Semitic book, said on Monday it felt like he was in "a court of the French Revolution" that judged and sentenced thousands of political offenders. He argued that a large anti-fascist protest outside the court last week influenced the verdict. A European parliament source told AFP that Greece must request that Lagos' immunity be lifted. The parliament's legal affairs committee will then vote on it before forwarding the case to the plenary. Known for his powerful build and biker moustache, the 48-year-old Lagos was the party's local commander for the Piraeus area in Golden Dawn's military-style hierarchy, prosecutors found. He probably gave the order to party henchmen to stab anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in 2013, the crime that sparked the investigation into the party, Fyssas' mother told the court in 2015. "Nothing would have been done without approval from Lagos, there is no chance," Magda Fyssas told the court. She said a group of Golden Dawn members "hemmed in" her son until truck driver Yiorgos Roupakias arrived by car to stab him. Lagos was a Greek parliament member from 2012. He had warned Egyptian migrant fishermen in his constituency in 2012 that they would have to "answer" to Golden Dawn. Hours later, four Egyptian fishermen were attacked in their home as they slept by suspected Golden Dawn militants. One was badly beaten. Lagos has already spent 18 months at maximum security Korydallos prison after being arrested at the start of the Fyssas investigation in 2013. He was conditionally released in 2015 but was briefly held later on for violating the terms of his parole. hec-jph/mbx/jxb
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