On the heels of two of his colleagues being taken into detention earlier in the day, a third member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party was jailed on Jan. 12, in Greece pending his trial along with the group’s leaders, on charges of running a criminal gang.
Efstathios Boukouras was taken into custody after testifying, joining Giorgos Yermenis and Panayiotis Iliopoulos, who had been before two appeals court prosecutors before him. Yermenis, also known as Kaiadas from his stint as a bassist with Greek-Norwegian black metal band Naer Mataron, has been accused by witnesses of training Golden Dawn members to attack migrants.
They are being held at police headquarters and are expected to be transferred to an Athens prison on Jan. 13. There, they will join party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos, deputy leader Christos Pappas and Yiannis Lagos, jailed since late September, days after a left-wing rapper was murdered by a Golden Dawn member.
Golden Dawn has 18 legislators in the Parliament but eight have now been detained, effectively muting the party as the government has promised to dismantle it.
Golden Dawn said that the coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative leader and his partner, the PASOK Socialists, are going after them while doing little about growing financial scandals and are soft on crime, allowing two convicted terrorists to be given furloughs, which they used to escape.
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