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| - The sentences in the trial involving Greece's neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn will be announced next week, a court source said Friday after guilty verdicts were handed down to its top brass. The sentences will be announced by Tuesday at the latest after the court examines any mitigating factors that could reduce prison terms, the source, who wished to remain anonymous, told AFP. After over five years of hearings in what was seen as the most important political trial in decades, a panel of three judges on Wednesday unanimously labelled the paramilitary party a criminal organisation. A total of 65 people were convicted of crimes ranging from running a criminal organisation, murder, assault to illegal weapons possession. The top members of the party, including founder and longterm leader Nikos Michaloliakos, could be jailed for up to 15 years. Key crimes carried out by Golden Dawn are the 2013 cold-blooded murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas and the beating of Egyptian fishermen in 2012 and communist trade unionists in 2013, the court established. During the investigation, prosecutors said Michaloliakos ran his party under a military-style hierarchy modelled on Hitler's Nazi party, with himself as the undisputed leader for over three decades. A search of party members' homes in 2013 uncovered firearms and other weapons, as well as Nazi and fascist memorabilia. There is still uncertainty over whether a former senior member of the party, who was elected to the European parliament in 2019, can be jailed at present. A European parliament source told AFP that Greece must request that Ioannis Lagos' immunity be lifted, while Greek legal experts note that he can only be stripped of his seat if his court appeal fails. An independent MEP after defecting from 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 illegal migration flows into Greece. European People's Party parliamentary leader Manfred Weber on Friday said that Lagos had also insulted a Greek MEP earlier this month and called former Greek conservative prime minister Antonis Samaras "political scum." Samaras' government had initiated the probe that eventually brought down Golden Dawn. One of Samaras' close associates later resigned after he was taped by a Golden Dawn member giving confidential information on the probe. Tapping into anti-austerity and anti-migrant anger during the decade-long Greek debt crisis, Golden Dawn for a time was the third most popular party in the country. At the height of its power, the party topped 10 percent in surveys. jph/mbx
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