Greek authorities on Saturday morning arrested Nikolaos Mihaloliakos, the leader of the far-right Golden Dawn party and spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris on charges of founding a criminal organization.
The arrests began in the morning with the first being that of head of the Golden Dawn party, followed by the arrest of Mr. Kassidiaris. After the news broke, Elias Panagiotaros also voluntarily showed up at the police headquarters and was also arrested, and it was also announced that Golden Dawn MP Mr. Lagos was arrested as well.
Immediate arrest warrants have also been issued for three more MPs as well as more than 30 members/supporters of the Golden Dawn party.
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UPDATE 3
According to the latest news, the political committee of Golden Dawn party (and/or the members that were not arrested) is going to meet secretly on Saturday and MP Nick Iliopoulos, deputy spokesman, has assumed the role of coordinator of this action. Iliopoulos is apparently in communication with other key party members and has sent out an alert.
The 9-member Political Council, includes the General Secretary of Golden Dawn Nikos Michaloliakos, as well as George Germenis, Artemis Mattheopoulos, Elias Panagiotaros, Giannis Lagos and lias Kassidiaris. The last three were arrested on Saturday morning.
All Golden Dawn officials will maintain their parliamentary seats (for now that is).
It was also reported that Michaloliakos has informed all members not to provoke the situation by organizing large gatherings and/or protests of dissatisfaction for obvious reasons, (meaning that anti-authoritarian forces that stem from extremist left-wing parties will in no doubt use the opportunity to create chaos).
Golden Dawn is now going to operate underground, and we must wait and see if it has the foundation to operate this way, while obviously being politically persecuted for its beliefs.
The only question that prevails is whether or not its MPs will resign on masse -since they cannot lose their parliamentary status- and rattle the Greek political scene again. Will they do this all at once, or will they resign one by one forcing the State to hold elections every month? No one knows. The only thing that is certain is that GD is going to be present at the next elections, either under the present name... or another.
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UPDATE 2
Given that the murder of the extreme leftist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, occurred about two weeks ago, Greek citizens are more than curious to find out exactly what sort of felony was committed by the Golden Dawn MPs over the last few days that prompted and allowed authorities to issue immediate arrest warrants that are in respect to the below articles in the Greek Constitution. Is this all a media ploy? Is this all another tactic of intimidation to turn our attention to this issue from all other pending issues? (Troika is presently in Athens and word has it that they want and are demanding that the Greek government take on more measures.)
Note that an immediate arrest warrant of an active Greek politician has never been released before. This is first and only case ever documented in modern Greek history.
Our opinion here at HellasFrappe is that they are politically executing a political party that was backed by over half a million voters. Over the past two weeks a strong smear campaign headed by very controversial and shady reporters from SKAI channel, MEGA channel, STAR channel and ALPHA Tv, banned together with the political elite, to not only label and characterize the Golden Party as a criminal organization, but also insult its well over 500,000 supporters as a criminal organization as well.
Friends, HellasFrappe is a conservative blog, but we are disappointed with the government of Antonis Samaras -who we have supported-, because actions such as these only occurred in Stalinist Russia, or still occur in areas like N. Korea and are products of extreme Leftist politicians. Shame...
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UPDATE 1
According to Article 62 of the Greek Constitution - Paragraph 1 "During the parliamentary term (MPs) Members (of Parliament) shall not be prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned or otherwise confined without permission of the House. Also an MP of the Greek Parliament cannot be prosecuted for political crimes in a Parliament that is dissolved, and after it is dissolved (cannot be arrested) until the proclamation of MPs from a new Parliament. Therefore, according to this article in the Greek Constitution it was unlawful to apprehend the above Members and unconstitutional.
There is only one exception. According to paragraph 4 of that Article there is no law that will safeguard them for persons caught committing a felony. Therefore, it is safe to assume, that the above Golden Dawn MPs to were arrested committed felonies, which is within the time limits of this offense, in accordance with Article 242 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
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The arrests came after the party was suspiciously held responsible following the actions of a self-proclaimed Golden Dawn supporter who murdered a anti-fascist rapper belonging to the extremist-left party ANTARSYA two weeks ago.
Even though Golden Dawn has repeatedly denied any links to this killing, the Greek media and all the political elite have banned together to use this incident and label it a "political act" so that the party can be banned from the the Greek Parliament. (The Greek parliament safeguards the Golden Dawn party, since it is a nominal political party and therefore cannot be banned by law from Greek political life, and especially from Parliament, much to the disappointment of Evangelos the Large Venizelos).
This is the first time in modern Greek history, or after the fall of the Junta in the early 70s, that a political party leader has been arrested. We are witnessing history in the making.
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