Golden Dawn MP Yiannis Lagos files motion over magistrates’ recusal

Yiannis Lagos filed a motion asking that Ioanna Klapa and Maria Dimitropoulou be recused

Golden Dawn deputy Yiannis Lagos, who is remanded in custody, filed a motion asking that the two investigating magistrates Ioanna Klapa and Maria Dimitropoulou handling the Golden Dawn case be recused.

In his petition, Lagos has cited two reasons which, as he claimed, show the two investigating magistrates were biased and their actions were based on criteria solely defined by ideological and political obsession.

The first one relates to a letter the two investigating magistrates sent to the president of the Parliament on April 16 regarding the speeding up of the process over the lifting of their immunity where they were pointing out the risk of the accused being released due to the tight time table.

The second reason the deputy has cited relates to the offenses of misconduct and attempted extortion that Lagos claimed the investigating magistrates had committed against the head of the Golden Dawn unit of Perama, Piraeus district, Anastasios Pantazis.

According to the deputy, the two investigating magistrates “directly and openly deviate from institutionalized legal principles and conduct an investigating research based on ideological political principles” while he believes that “they have adopted the political stance of our opponents that equate Golden Dawn with a criminal organization.” He also accuses them of having included anything possibly related to the Golden Dawn in the case file and of conducting “a political and not judicial investigation against us.”