Nikos Michaloliakos sentenced to 13 years

Nikos Michaloliakos with his wife, Eleni Zaroulia, in parliament in 2014; he has been sentenced to 13 years and she received a shorter sentence. SIMELA PANTZARTZI/EPA.

The leader of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn has been jailed for 13 years for running a criminal organisation, spelling the end of his violent militia that disguised itself for years as a political party. Nikos Michaloliakos and five senior members, all former MPs, were sentenced today in Athens for their membership, and overseeing a campaign of violence against opponents. The sentences were the death blow to the movement, which rose under its mangled swastika-style emblem to become Greece’s third-largest party on a promise that it would “scour the country” of immigrants.