Greek minister decries father’s ‘bestial’ Nazi salute in court
‘It made me shudder,’ Thanos Plevris says of gesture made by his father, who is defending a jailed far-right Golden Dawn MEP
ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s health minister on Tuesday denounced his far-right father for a Nazi salute made during the ongoing appeal trial of neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn.
Thanos Plevris, a former member of the far-right Greek party Laos, called the gesture “bestial.”
The minister told Skai TV he took particular offense that his father Kostas Plevris — who is defending a jailed ex-Golden Dawn Eurodeputy in the trial — made the gesture last week during testimony given by the mother of Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-fascist rapper murdered by a Golden Dawn member in 2013.
“It made me shudder,” Plevris told Skai TV.
“First, the salute was inside a courtroom. And second… that it was in front of a woman whose child was murdered by a Nazi,” he said.
“I bear no responsibility, it makes me feel very bad,” the minister said.
Thanos Plevris added that his father has “never hidden his ideology,” which is not illegal under Greek law.
A lawyer himself, Thanos Plevris had defended his father in court more than a decade earlier over a 2006 book calling Jews sub-human, mortal enemies, and worthy of the firing squad.
The book by Plevris senior also denied the Holocaust, took the side of the Nazis, and threatened Jews.
Kostas Plevris had originally been found guilty of racial insults and inciting hatred and racial violence, but was acquitted on appeal in 2009.
Upon becoming health minister last year, Thanos Plevris said he “opposed all forms of antisemitism” and “completely disagreed” with his father’s views.
The Golden Dawn appeal trial began in June, nearly two years after the conviction of nearly 60 defendants in a landmark case over the murder of Fyssas and other crimes including murder, assault, and running a criminal organization.
It is expected to last at least a year.
The Greek Jewish community today numbers around 6,000. Around 50,000 were massacred during the Nazi occupation.
