Golden Dawn party

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of May on the eligibility of political parties contesting the June 9 European Parliament elections, including the far-right Spartiates (Spartans), who are being prosecuted for voter fraud.

The far-right party is accused of deceiving the electorate as to its real leadership.

The president of the Pakistani community, Javed Aslan, prays at the site where migrant Shahzad Luqman was murdered in central Athens by two men with links to the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn group on the 11th anniversary of the incident. Luqman, aged 27, was attacked and stabbed seven times in Petralona, south of the city center, on January 17, 2013, as he was cycling to his place of work.

Ilias Kasidiaris, the convicted former spokesman of the now-defunct neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, has resigned from the Athens Municipal Council after being sworn into office in late December.

A lawyer who represented former MEP Yiannis Lagos of the now disbanded Golden Dawn party has been permanently disbarred from the Athens Bar Association after a decision on Wednesday by the Secondary Disciplinary Council, chaired by Supreme Court President Ioanna Klapa-Christodoulea.

The members of far-right groups that were arrested last week for the violent clashes with leftists at Monastiraki metro station in central Athens were released Monday, subject to the condition of appearing at their local police station. 

Greek Police on Thursday banned all public rallies and protest marches in Attica on November 1, which marks the 10-year anniversary of the fatal shooting of two members of the now-defunct, Nazi-inspired Golden Dawn party, citing a "risk to public safety" and the possibility of violence.

With backing from a politician jailed for leading a party declared a criminal gang, Greek far-right groups swept up over 12% of the vote in Sunday's election, mirroring the rise of populist and ultra-nationalist politicians across Europe.

Greece's Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his center-right party New Democracy won by a landslide in elections on Sunday, winning 40.5 per cent of the vote, enough for Mitsotakis to govern without a coalition partner.

Mitsotakis described the results as "a strong mandate, to move more quickly along the road of major changes."

The far-right Spartiates (Spartans) party, which has been backed by jailed neo-Nazi Ilias Kasidiaris, looks set to cross the 3% threshold needed to make it into Parliament, with the latest exit polls showing it clinching as much as 5.6% of the vote.

With the formerly ascendant, Nazi-inspired Golden Dawn party broken, its leadership in prison, and the anti-Western left defanged, Greece's political fringes are looking more gauche than sinister.