The Appellate special investigative judges handling the Golden Dawn investigation have requested that the parliamentary immunity of the party’s entire parliamentary group.

Specifically, the judges have requested the immunity lift of Eleni Zaroulia, Nikolaos Kouzilos, Antonios Gregos, Polivios Zisimopoulos, Konstantinos Barbarousis, Chrysovalantis Alexopoulos, Dimitrios Koukoutsis, Artemis Mattheopoulos and Michael Arvanitis.

In their application judges Ioanna Klapa and Maria Dimitropoulou stress that the evidence they have accumulated indicates that the rest of neo-Nazi party’s parliamentary group must be summoned for questioning regarding their participation in a criminal organization. Five protected witnesses revealed extensive information about the party’s activities and that they would even recruit underage members.

Additionally, video footage recovered from Golden Dawn computers depicts MPs and new recruits can be seen giving Nazi salutes and swearing that they will hang politicians.
In addition, the investigative judges have requested that the immunity of six MPs must also be lifted in order to question them for illegal possession and use of fire arms; MPs Nikos Michaloliakos, Ilia Kasidiaris, Nikolaos Michos, Giorgos Germenis, Panagiotis Lagos, Efstathios Boukouras and Panagiotis Iliopoulos are believed to have supplied other members of the criminal organization with weapons.

On their way out of Parliament, four Golden Dawn MPs – Kasidiaris, Zisimopoulos, Mattheopoulos and Michos – bumped into the Interior Minister Yannis Michelakis and PASOK MP Nikos Sifounakis, who were having a discussion in a hallway.

As soon as the Golden Dawn MPs walked passed them, they launched a tirade of abuse, accusing them “high treason” and “overthrowing democracy” and claimed that their persecution was “due to the municipal election and [Golden Dawn’s] high approval rates”.