HumanRights360, constantly strengthening its activities on recording and addressing racist crime, though this report tries to investigate the way in which the prosecutorial authorities in Greece (have not) confronted criminal actions conducted with a racist motive. The source of this Report is mainly the case file that was conducted following the murder of Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013, in terms of which numerous case files were united and associated for the evaluation and substantiation of the criminal organization “Golden Dawn”.
This study was conducted by Thanasis Kampagiannis, the lawyer of the civil action of the Egyptian fishermen in Golden Dawn’s trial and identifies that – beside the profound positive changes in anti-racist legislation- the delays in the investigation of crimes which are motivated from prejudice are continued. This is because of the fact that the relevant Authorities do not always follow prosecution ex officio for every crime that includes indicators of prejudice, the racist motive is not taken into consideration during the first steps of the investigation, while the Authorities do not intervene for the rescuing of victims and the arrest of perpetrators, even when the incident occurred in front of police officers.
Unfortunately, Golden Dawn’s trial highlighted in the most emphatic way that the criminal organization had the political and operational coverage of many various actors thus, succeed to act undisturbed for so many years. In this report we focus in one of the main actors, the Hellenic Police: through the pre-existing reports and above all through the specific cases that was constructed in the trial’s context it is evidenced without any doubt that not only the systematic under-recording of racist motive but also the constant impunity of the perpetrators conceals significant responsibilities of the prosecuting authorities the period in question.
