Greece
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A Greek court on Wednesday sentenced the leadership of the extreme-right Golden Dawn party to 13 years in prison, imposing the near-maximum penalty for running a criminal organization blamed for numerous violent hate crimes, The Associated Press reported.

Presiding judge Maria Lepenioti read out the sentences against party leader Nikos Michaloliakos and seven other former lawmakers. One of eight leading party members received 10 years.

The landmark ruling follows a five-year trial of dozens of top officials, members and supporters of Golden Dawn.

Eleven other former parliament members were jailed for between five and seven years for membership of a criminal organization, while a party associate was given a life sentence for the murder of Greek rap singer Pavlos Fyssas in a 2013 attack that triggered the crackdown against the party, according to AP.

Last week, the court adjourned the sentencing procedure for the 18 former lawmakers of the party and others convicted in the case.

On Monday, the court refused lawyers' requests to consider mitigating factors when sentencing Michaloliakos and six other former party lawmakers.

Key crimes carried out by Golden Dawn are the 2013 murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas and the beating of Egyptian fishermen in 2012 and communist trade unionists in 2013, the court established on Wednesday.

Golden Dawn, founded as a neo-Nazi group in the 1980s, has become notorious for its blatant anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric, openly displaying copies of “Mein Kampf,” as well as other works on Greek racial superiority at party headquarters.

Michaloliakos has claimed that Nazi concentration camps did not use ovens and gas chambers to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.

In recent years, the party has been the subject of a crackdown by Greek authorities, with several of its leaders being arrested and tried.