I. The Murder of Pavlos Fyssas
[2018]
Forensic Architecture
Project Team: Eyal Weizman, Christina Varvia, Stefanos Levidis, Simone Rowat With:
Sarah Nankivell, Nicholas Masterton, Stefan Laxness, Sofia Georgovassili, Dorette Panagiotopoulou, Fivos Avgerinos Thanks to:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Shakeeb Abu Hamdan
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PUBLICATION DATE: 21.09.2018
On the night of September 17, 2013, the young Greek rapper Pavlos Fyssas was attacked and murdered by members of Golden Dawn in his home neighborhood Keratsini, in Athens. The witness accounts of the event claim police were present at the site, observing the crime as it occurred, yet failed to prevent it. The murder marked the culmination of Golden Dawn’s criminal activity who, to this day, have been operating as a paramilitary organisation while holding seats in the Greek parliament. Golden Dawn holds a long record of brutally attacking migrants and political opponents since their formation in the late ’80s. Although some individual crimes have been prosecuted in the past, it took the murder of a Greek citizen to instigate a full investigation on Golden Dawn as a criminal organisation rather than its individual members. Even in the current trial, the entanglement of the police with the organization remains largely unchecked. Against this background, Forensic Architecture has undertaken the task to analyze the court documents, CCTV footage, and police and ambulance radio transmissions of the night, in order to reconstruct a comprehensive account of the event. The resulting video investigation (exhibited) provides a media-aided overview of the event that goes beyond the understanding that any individual present at the scene had access to. The video investigation and supporting report were presented to the Athens Court of Appeals by the lawyers of the Fyssas family on September 10-11, 2018. The investigation has been commissioned by the family of Pavlos Fyssas and co-produced by BAK.