President Cyril Ramaphosa has outlined in a court affidavit the tortuous and stressful diplomatic consultations Pretoria went through before announcing on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not, after all, attend next month’s BRICS Summit in Johannesburg.
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By George Gilson
The legal committee of the European Parliament today approved the lifting of the immunity of convicted former far-right Golden Dawn MP Yannis Lagos, who was in charge of the neo-Nazis storm troopers that were responsible for the murder of rapper Pavlos Fyssas and is now serving as an independent MEP.
The neo-Nazi party failed to pass the three percent threshold to enter Parliament in the July, 2019, general elections and is now defunct.
The committee approved the lifting of Lagos’s immunity by a huge margin – 22 in favour and two against.
Golden Dawn’s, Lagos’s conviction
In a landmark ruling on 7 October, 2020, Lagos was one of seven MPs who were convicted of comprising the directorate of the party, which was declared a criminal organisation. The other six members of the directοrate are currently serving 13-year jail sentences.