An MEP and former leading member of Greece's banned neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement, arrested in Belgium, has challenged moves to send him home for imprisonment, prosecutors said Wednesday.
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Yannis Lagos was detained on a European arrest warrant in Brussels on Tuesday, shortly after the European Parliament voted to strip him of his immunity.
But, brought before a Belgian magistrate on Wednesday, he challenged the move to send him to Greece to serve a 13-year jail term, deputy public prosecutor Katrien Meulemans said.
"The investigating judge decided to detain him," she said, explaining that a legal procedure would now be launched to study Greece's extradition request.
"The Brussels Council Chamber will decide on the execution of the European arrest warrant within 15 days. The date of the hearing has not been set and will be announced later."
Lagos, a 48-year-old former nightclub bouncer, was elected to the European Parliament in 2019. He entered as a member of the far-right Golden Dawn group but later rebadged as an independent.
In October, along with other leaders and members of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, he was convicted in Greece on several charges, including that of running a criminal organization.
