135th Hearing, Court of Appeals, March 8th, 2017<\/b><\/p>\n
I. Access to the Court<\/b>
\nThe courtroom remains open to the public upon presentation of a state ID card, which is retained by court authorities for the duration of the session. There was a relatively limited attendance from members of the press, reduced public attendance, and the presence of the police in the courtroom remained unchanged.
\n\u0399\u0399.\u00a0Presence of defendants<\/b>
\nNone of the defendants was present at the hearing.
\n\u0399\u0399\u0399. Testimony of witness Kimonas<\/b> Koursopoulos<\/b><\/p>\n
\nA. Examination by the members of the court<\/b>
\nResponding to questions by the presiding judge, the witness testified that he is a student of interior design, in a public vocational school and that he finished the 3rd Lyceum of Paleo Faliro in 2014, and also that in 2013 he was a student of the second year of Lyceum, the same year as Demertzidis and Kambioti, but in a different class. Demertzidis and Kambioti were in the same class but after the incident they changed classes. Regarding Demertzidis, the witness did not believe he was politically active, and regarding Kambioti he said that he had noticed she had far-right leanings, something that he inferred from the incident involving Demertzidis, and from what happened to the witness himself, a little after Christmas of that year. He said that he saw Kambioti and her boyfriend, Apostolopoulos, spraying graffiti on a school wall, at around 21:00, drawing swastikas and writing fascist slogans in German. Apostolopoulos was probably a resident of the area, was about 20-21 years old at the time, and his appearance was a bit \u201coff\u201d. The next day Koursopoulos reprimanded Kambioti for the slogans, saying that it wasn\u2019t right, and she seemed to ignore him. By morning most of the slogans had been painted over, probably by the principal, but they were still discernible under the fresh paint. After school he saw in the park across the school Kambioti and Apostolopoulos along with another 4 persons (who weren\u2019t students of the school), who had shaved heads, and one of them was wearing strange eyeglasses and a weird jacket, and they were all looking at him in a hostile manner. At that moment he realized the gravity of the situation, and in the afternoon he phoned Kambioti to tell her he wanted to meet and apologize to her. She was alone in the park but after 10 minutes Apostolopoulos and five others showed up and started shoving him and telling him \u201cLet\u2019s go this way\u201d and \u201cWhat are you? Are you antifascist?\u201d It was then that he understood that they were fascists. Apostolopoulos took out a knife and told him, \u201cDon\u2019t play with the madness of just anyone\u201d. Kambioti then intervened and told Apostolopoulos to leave Koursopoulos alone, because he had apologized to her.
\nResponding to questions by the state prosecutor the witness stated that Kambioti did not have much to do with Demertzidis and that Foivos was a good kid that never bothered her. Concerning the incident he said that even though he doesn\u2019t speak German, he supposed that German slogans next to swastikas can only be fascist slogans. It wasn\u2019t him that mentioned the incident to the principal, and he hesitated to make an official complaint to the police, but after the incident involving Demertzidis, and after his mother\u2019s insistence, he thought he had a duty to do so. Concerning the reasons that lead Apostolopoulos to attack Demertzidis, the witness said the following: \u201cDemertzidis said that he also didn\u2019t know [the reason], he could only guess. Foivos wouldn\u2019t hurt a fly. You can\u2019t just murder someone that wouldn\u2019t hurt a fly. In school I saw fights break out even weak kids. You can see the same in the society at large. Foivos wasn\u2019t weak but this means nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n
\nB. Examination of the witness by the civil action counsels<\/b>
\nResponding to questions by civil action counsel Zotos the witness stated that he hadn\u2019t seen Kambioti go to the park alone, but would sometimes hang around there in the company of Apostolopoulos, and as for the motive of the incident against his person, he said he attributes it to the political part of his rebuke against Kambioti, and to the comments themselves. He testified that apart from a very brief and probably \u201ctrivial\u201d fling between Demertzidis and Kambioti in the third year of high school, their contact had nothing amorous to it. A little before the incident took place, Kambioti had drawn swastikas on her desk and Demertzidis had told her to be careful.
\nRegarding Apostolopoulos the witness testified that he doesn\u2019t know for sure if he is connected to Golden Dawn, but he is surely connected to Nazism, and that in the trials the witness wouldn\u2019t even look at him because he was still afraid of him. Responding to a question by civil action Kabagiannis about whether he talked to his classmates about the incident with Foivos, the witness stated: \u201cYes. Everyone at school was scared and they\u2019re afraid to come and testify. They are afraid that the defendants [:of this trial] will later come to kill them. Their parents wouldn\u2019t let them. I have discussed the matter and they\u2019re afraid to come forward. At the first trial only one person came to testify\u201d. Responding to a question by civil action counsel Zafeiriou about why he didn\u2019t go to the principal to report the incident, the witness said: \u201cI\u2019m still afraid today. I want justice. Even now at the witness stand I feel afraid. The person that attacked me is out on parole\u201d. He also testified that the people he saw in the park had the same features as the Golden Dawn groups he\u2019s seen on TV: \u201cThe body language, the jacket, the hair, everything. The way they look at you, most of them have a kind of deadness in their eyes\u201d.
\nDefense counsel Stratis asked if the Nazi leanings that the witness mentioned had been evident in any way outside the house of Demertzidis, and that witness answered that after the incident, they wrote \u201cGD\u201d on the doorbell of Foivos house, and also \u201cYou\u2019re dead\u201d, and he [:Foivos] received threatening phone calls from people that were saying to him \u201cWe\u2019ll kill you\u201d etc. The witness also believes that the motive against him was political rather than personal because he is also against fascism without making a big deal out of it in the 15-member school committee or anywhere else. But he was threatened, as he said, after he reprimanded Kambioti.
\nResponding to questions by defense counsel Tzellis, whether he knows of any other Golden Dawn attacks, the witness said \u201cI know about Fyssas, which shed light and something is finally happening so that things won\u2019t go on so thoughtlessly. I\u2019ve also heard about the criminal activities of Golden Dawn MPs, that they are connected to the drug trade and other similar dealings\u201d, a comment that caused the defense to erupt in protest. The presiding judge intervened and called for a short recess until things in the courtroom calmed down. When the court reconvened, and responding to a question by defense counsel Tzellis about what is it that the witness is afraid of, the witness answered: \u201cFor quite some time I\u2019ve been hearing about attacks, and nothing has been done, and this leads me to think that these people have a sort of immunity\u201d. Responding to a question by defense counsel Papadopoulou about what would have happened if the witness had said to Apostolopoulos that he was a leftist and an antifascist, he said: \u201cI couldn\u2019t. They would have killed me\u201d.
\nDefense counsel Aggeletos then asked him to describe the Celtic cross, and the same counsel asked the witness if he knows that cemeteries in Ireland have depictions of the Celtic cross. Defense counsel Papadellis insisted on asking the witness about the fear that he felt, repeating questions that the witness had already answered (the registrar read the record to confirm it) as well as the political motive and when the witness refrained from answering again, the counsel told the witness \u201cDon\u2019t tell me \u2018I\u2019ve already responded to the question\u2019 to what you have been told to say\u201d. Defense counsel Michalolias mocked the fact that the witness didn\u2019t go through the university entrance exams because of his fear and asked him about his grades, a question that the presiding judge did not allow.
\nWhen defense counsel Roussopoulos asked the witness whether the jacket that Apostolopoulos was wearing was of the kind called \u201cflying\u201d, the witness once more refrained from answering, and tension rose between Roussopoulos and the witness, with the former telling the latter \u201cI won\u2019t have it. You will learn respect. Cheek won\u2019t pass here\u201d, causing civil action counsel Kabagiannis to react to the admonition of the presiding judge telling the witness to answer the question, by telling her: \u201cWhy should he, Your Honor? He has already answered the question. We can\u2019t bring witnesses here to be terrorized by the defense. As a member of the court you are responsible for allowing the same questions to be posed over and over again, so that they create a climate of fear\u201d. There was another short recess. Afterwards the testimony of Koursopoulos was concluded and witness Damianopoulou Eleni, the principal of the school at the time the incident took place, was called to the stand.<\/p>\n
\n\u0399V. Examination of witness Damianopoulou Eleni<\/b>
\nThe witness stated that she is a teacher and that in 2013 she was a principal at the 3rd Lyceum of Paleo Faliro. She said that before the incident took place Kambioti\u2019s mother had come to the school and had told her that she was afraid for her daughter, that the kid was in trouble, and she asked the witness to keep an eye out for her. At that period the witness was erasing Golden Dawn slogans every day from the school walls, but had no reason to believe they were written by kids from the school. Concerning the incident, the school guard called her and she saw Demertzidis bleeding. She called an ambulance and took him to the hospital Iatriko Kentro after notifying his father. Demertzidis told her that he saw who had attacked him, but he didn\u2019t want to tell her who it was and she didn\u2019t press him. Later some of the students told her to ask Christiana [who did not come to testify due to a grave health problem], who told her about two persons that had run with flushed faces and gotten in a white-grey Smart. The students identified the car as belonging to Apostolopoulos. The witness heard from the students that Apostolopoulos was a Golden Dawner. The witness then called Kambioti to her office, who told her that it couldn\u2019t have been him. It was there that she heard Apostolopoulos\u2019 name for the first time, as well as the fact that he was a member of Golden Dawn.
\nRegarding the attack on Foivos, the witness thinks that the reason was hatred against anything that is different. If, according to them, Foivos was pressing Kambioti not to have anything to do with them, then this is what caused the whole thing. Not because of Kambioti, but because of his different political beliefs. Foivos, though, was not a member of any party, but a quiet, sensitive kid, with a wide range of interests. The witness said: \u201cIt was a difficult time. We were hearing about various things, assaults, and nothing was happening [:regarding arrests]\u201d. This is what causes someone to commit a crime. At the time, I felt strongly that they could do anything they wanted, without repercussions. I believe that the students had misjudged the severity of the situation, that it wasn\u2019t just empty talk\u201d.
\nResponding to a question by the deputy state prosecutor she said that there were many incidents like this at the time in Paleo Faliro, including the stabbing of an immigrant, whose perpetrators were never caught. The witness had also seen Golden Dawn squads appear in the square of Nea Smyrni and hand out leaflets.
\nResponding to questions by the civil action the witness stated that the chief emotion of those slogans [:on the school walls] was hate, and she didn\u2019t want the students to see that kind of thing first thing each morning when coming to school. \u201cBecause the schools can\u2019t cultivate hate but solidarity. We know from history what the swastika, and blood, and honor, stand for\u201d.
\nAt this point the presiding judge adjourned for Thursday, March 8th, 2017, at 09:00, in the Women\u2019s Wing of Korydallos Prison. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
135th Hearing, Court of Appeals, March 8th, 2017 I. Access to the Court The courtroom remains open to the public upon presentation of a state ID card, which is retained by court authorities for the duration of the session. There was a relatively limited attendance from members of the press, reduced public attendance, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2899,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2929,"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928\/revisions\/2929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldendawnwatch.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}