Ilias Kasidiaris, former spokesman of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, left high-security Domokos prison on Tuesday, 15 September 2026, and said he would return to politics.
Kasidiaris, 45, was given a 13-year sentence as a leading member of the organisation. Golden Dawn carried out years of attacks on migrants and political opponents and was convicted over the 2013 murder of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas.
Outside the prison he raised a fist and held a folded Greek flag. He said he was coming back to a “new, strong national party, such as those dominating all of Europe.”
“Today I am back. And from what I see, I am not alone,” he said.
He called his imprisonment “an underhanded and dirty conspiracy” by political opponents and said he would name a new party on Monday. Dozens of supporters were waiting, some with Greek flags. Many chanted that they were with him and that they would make him prime minister.
Time served and a banned party
A Golden Dawn MP from 2012 to 2019, Kasidiaris served six years in prison and worked off the remainder of the sentence while inside. He had also spent a year in pre-trial detention in 2014 before the 2020 imprisonment.
A former food chemist, he kept campaigning from prison, mainly on YouTube (about 162,000 subscribers). In July he drew a comment from Elon Musk, whom Kasidiaris has called “the most eminent personality in the world.” Musk wrote on X on 17 July that Kasidiaris’s continued incarceration was “messed up.” Musk has also backed far-right groups in Europe, including Germany’s AfD.
Before he went to prison in October 2020, Kasidiaris launched a party called Hellenes and tried from his cell to stand in the 2023 general election. Greece’s Supreme Court barred the party from the ballot.
Legal experts say he remains barred from running for office until 2033, when the sentence was due to end. The Supreme Court would decide at election time. The next general election is due in 2027.
A record of violence
Kasidiaris was a drill instructor for Golden Dawn members. He has been photographed with a swastika tattoo on his left arm and is known for public assaults. On a 2012 television programme he slapped a communist MP and threw water in the face of a left-wing lawmaker. He has also spat at and struck camera crews.
In November 2012 he told supporters that seats in parliament let Golden Dawn members “carry weapons legally with a permit.” “There’s no immediate arrest if an incident occurs, so we can move around a bit more freely,” he said.
Golden Dawn entered parliament in 2012 during the debt crisis, as trust in mainstream parties collapsed. The Greek far right is now split among small parties, several of them outside parliament. In 2023 the Spartans, publicly backed by Kasidiaris, took more than 240,000 votes.
His release comes as far-right parties gain ground in parts of Europe, including a regional win in Germany for AfD — the first of its kind there since the Second World War.
Kasidiaris speaking to supporters after leaving Domokos prison, 15 September 2026.
