Greece’s health minister 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 said took particular offense that his father Kostas Plevris — who is defending a jailed ex-Golden Dawn Eurodeputy in the trial — made the gesture 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 said.
“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.
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.
