Nazi Douchebag Arrested After Hiding in Apartment for 8 Months To Avoid Jail

One of Europe’s most-wanted Nazis is a fugitive no more. On Thursday night Greek police arrested Christos Pappas, the second-in-command of the far-right criminal gang turned political party Golden Dawn.

Pappas was arrested at an apartment in central Athens where he has apparently been cowering for the last eight months, to avoid a 13-year jail sentence he was handed last October.

Pappas’ disappearance had confounded Greece and perplexed the rest of Europe. How could a notorious neo-Nazi political leader just disappear? Security officials had told VICE World News they were flummoxed: Had he been aided by sympathetic law enforcement? Had he escaped the country dressed as an Orthodox priest? Had he been sheltered by a renegade sect of conservative monks? Was he living freely in an unrecognised Serbian republic alongside convicted war criminals?

The reality of the situation, it turns out, was more mundane. Police received an anonymous tip to a nondescript central Athens apartment block with no immediately visible links to rogue religious groups, spies or Serbian war criminals. Arrested alongside Pappas, according to police, was a 52-year-old Ukranian woman – not his wife – who was said to have rented the apartment and suspected of sheltering him since last October.

Once the deputy leader of the third most popular party in Greece, Pappas disappeared last October after he, along with dozens of the group’s members, were convicted on a slew of criminal charges stemming from attacks on immigrant groups and the 2013 murder of leftist rapper Pavlos Fyssas. 

Although Golden Dawn had received substantial support from political coalition allies after placing third in 2012 elections, the Greek political establishment was horrified by the brazen public murder of Fyssas and the subsiquent investigation into the group discovered widespread links between Golden Dawn and other right wing parties, the police, and even the Greek intelligence services. 

Initial police reports indicate that Pappas had not left the building where he was arrested since evading police cameras that were watching his northern Athens home in October after a panel of judges upheld his 13-year sentence for operating a criminal conspiracy. 

Another former Golden Dawn official, Iannos Lagos, was serving as an independent neo-Nazi member of the European Parliament in Brussels at the time of his sentencing and had claimed parliamentary immunity against extradition  but in May a Belgian court rejected his claim and deported him to Greece. 

Pappas is due in court in Athens on Friday. He is unlikely to disappear again.