Christos Pappas refuses to surrender to authorities as most members of extreme right-wing party turn themselves in, after being convicted of being part of a criminal group. Greek authorities are searching for one of the leading members and former lawmakers of the extreme right-wing Golden Dawn party after he refused to turn himself in following a court decision ordering his imprisonment. Police were searching Friday for Christos Pappas, officially considered a fugitive after a Thursday court decision ordering a total of 39 people, including 13 former Golden Dawn lawmakers, to be imprisoned after they were convicted of running the party as a criminal organization. All but two of the 39 were in custody by Thursday night, having turned themselves in. However, Pappas’ lawyer Periklis Stavrianakis told Greek state broadcaster ERT that his client was not surrendering as he considered his conviction would be quashed on appeal, meaning he would have served a prison sentence that could be overturned. Appeals processes in the Greek court system can take several years.
via timesofisrael: Leading member of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn on the run from police
siehe auch: Greek Police Fiasco as Convicted Golden Dawn Neo-Nazi Goes AWOL. Greek police are under fire on Friday for failing to arrest a leading Golden Dawn figure who disappeared after a court sentenced him to 13 years in prison. Police say that the whereabouts of Christos Pappas, believed to have been the second-in-command of the criminal organization, are not known. Officers unsuccessfully raided houses in Athens and Ioannina in northwestern Greece in search of Pappas after an Athens court rejected a prosecutor’s call for the leadership of Golden Dawn, and dozens of its members, to have their prison sentences suspended. On Thursday, Pappas’ lawyer Pericles Stavrianakis said his client had “made a conscious decision” to not turn himself in to the authorities. His disappearance is a major embarrassment for the Greek police, who in recent days had been adamant that all necessary measures for the arrest of the convicts were already in place. Pappas, who is considered to be an unrepentant neo-Nazi, was one of the founding members of Golden Dawn. By late Thursday some of the party’s prominent former MPs had been taken into custody.