#kasidiaris

This week's newsletter from AthensLive is out:    

*         Artists struggle continues 

*         Is the law banning a far-right party a bad omen for democracy?

*        Judicial ‘coup’ in favor of vulture funds - Check

- are the main headlines to be found inside this highly informative weekly must-read from and about Greece. The National Theatre Drama School teachers resigned en masse to protest the Presidential Decree undermining Drama School studies. Protests, theatre squats, and more resignations followed, yet the government remains intransigent. A new amendment was voted in, allegedly for blocking a far-right party led by the convicted ex-Golden Dawn member Kasidiaris, raising fears that due to the vagueness of its provisions can lead to the banning of any party not to the liking of a specific establishment. The overturning of landmark Top Court decision protecting debtors from vulture funds was overturned by a new Top Court ruling which provides that these funds can proceed with auctions of debtors' assets. This did not come as a shock as the government had directly intervened through the Bank of Greece to overturn this decision.

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For directing a criminal org

Thanasis Kampagiannis, who has spent the past five years prosecuting one of Greece’s most high-profile political trials, has seen his fair share of disturbing footage.

“Do you want to see a video?” he asks during an interview in his office, turning to his laptop and clicking on a link. On the screen, a man instructs a group clad in black t-shirts how to assault migrant workers at an open market in Athens.

“We will cleanse [Panagitsa Square]. Nothing will be left standing. Nothing! Everything that moves gets slaughtered,” he tells the men. “Golden Dawn has now entered our lives — whatever we are told we must do.”

Kampagiannis presses pause. The footage was found on a hard disk belonging to a member of Golden Dawn, a far-right political party has MPs in the Greek parliament, and shows one of its hit squads — the so-called Nikaia battalion — preparing to carry out on attack, he says.

In April 2015, 69 members of Golden Dawn — including its leader Nikos Michaloliakos and the entire 2013 parliamentary group — went on trial accused of orchestrating murder, arson, assault and weapons possession. The indictment describes a political party that is “working as a cloak [for] a criminal conspiracy” authorizing attacks against political opponents, migrants and anti-fascists, Kampagiannis says.

The administration of Domokos Prison has agreed on Thursday to limit the calls of Ilias Kasidiaris, an imprisoned former senior member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn group, after calls to do so by Greece’s general secretary for anti-crime policy, Sofia Nikolaou.

The prison administration has decided to monitor and limit Kasidiaris’ phone calls to persons authorized to visit him in prison or communicate with him via Skype, that is close family members and his lawyers.

The administration revealed that if any kind of irregular activity is noticed, that is communication with unauthorized persons or even discussions with authorized persons on topics that are not personal or familial, communications will be immediately interrupted.