Police identify 10 Golden Dawn members in Fyssas murder
Ten members of extreme right-wing Golden Dawn have been identified in an investigation into the murder of 34-year-old hip hop artist Pavlos Fyssas by 45-year-old Giorgos Roupakias in Keratsini last week.
The names of the Golden Dawn members’ were discovered following a probe of the suspect’s phone records.
On Monday a Piraeus prosecutor also authoritized an investigation into the phone records of several more Golden Dawn members, including the head of the ultranationalist party’s Nikaia branch in southeastern Attica.
At the same time, a decision regarding Roupakias’s transfer to a local prison was expected on Monday, after the chief of Korydallos Prison refused to accept him after he was remanded in custody over the weekend, citing security reasons.
Meanwhile, an opinion poll conducted by RASS and published by Eletheros Typos on Sunday pointed to a drop in the extreme right-wing’s ratings. According to the poll Golden Dawn stood at 5.8 percent, compared to 8.3 percent the extremist party had garnered in a survey published the previous week.
The RASS survey also noted that 75.7 percent of respondents believed that Fyssas’s murder demonstrated the threat posed by Golden Dawn, while 77.7 percent felt that the party was connected somehow to the incident, despite efforts by its officials to deny any involvement. Eight in 10 participants defined the party as “fascist” or “criminal.”
Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Dendias on Sunday proposed legislation that could block state funding for Golden Dawn if authorities find connections to the Keratsini murder. Dendias proposed a law that would not allow funding to parties if their leader or more than a tenth of their lawmakers are charged with a felony carrying a 10-year jail term.
[Kathimerini English Edition & Reuters]
