Thousands of people gathered outside a courthouse in Athens on Wednesday calling for tough sentences against the leaders of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn as the court prepared to hand down its verdicts.
Anti-fascist activists shouted slogans calling for the defendants to be jailed as they waited for the climax of one of the most important trials in the country’s modern political history.
The crowd started gathering two hours before the verdicts are due to be handed down from 0800 GMT, in response a call from the anti-fascist movement, trade unions and parties on the left.
Hundreds of police were also deployed at the courthouse, a few kilometers from the historic centre of the capital.
After hearings over the last five years, the Athens court will determine whether Golden Dawn is a criminal organization that carried out violent attacks on opponents on the orders of founder Nikos Michaloliakos and his inner circle.
The prosecutions were sparked by the late-night murder of a 34-year-old anti-fascist rapper called Pavlos Fyssas, who was chased down by a mob of Golden Dawn thugs and stabbed to death in front of a cafe in the western Athens suburb of Keratsini in September 2013.
