Key figure in Fyssas murder testifies at Golden Dawn trial

Four years into the trial of Golden Dawn as a criminal organisation and for the murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, the court began hearing the testimony of those charged in the case.

The huge delays in the case over the last four years - during which witnesses were examined and documents were read out in court drawn - have drawn severe criticism from the family of Fyssas, legal circles and opposition parties, who have charged that the government and the competent justice ministry failed to provide the adequate infrastructure, including a suitably large courtroom, and a sufficient number of judges and prosecutors to handle a high profile case that has merged a long list of murders and other crimes with which Golden Dawn has been charged.

The first person charged to testify today was a key actor who set off the chain of events that led to the murder of Fyssas by Golden Dawn operational member Yorgos Roupakias on a street in Keratsini near Piraeus.

Ioannis Aggos today cracked and confessed after feverish examination by the president of the three-judge felony court, Maria Lepenioti, that he is as charged the Golden Dawn member who spotted Fyssas at a Keratsini café and called and alerted members of the Nikaia operational branch of the neo-Nazi party that the rapper was there.

Fatal telephone call

It took dozens of questions from the judge before Aggos confessed that he was at the café and called Golden Dawn member Ioannis Kazantzoglou, who has also been charged in the murder, and told him that, "There are certain people who are bothering us and we will leave."

That was the signal for the neo-Nazi storm troopers to be sent in - including  Roupakias, who stabbed Fyssas in the heart in what was viewed as a...