The attack on a SYRIZA MP and the killing of a 33-year-old man in Athens

There has to be an exemplary punishment of the people involved in the attack on a SYRIZA MP and the killing of a 33-year-old man in Athens, Minister of State Christoforos Vernardakis told the  'Praktoreio 104.9 FM' on Monday, saying that he saw a "coordinated plan" behind such incidents.

"We are no longer dealing with isolated incidents here, nor with some extreme circles that act in the heat of the moment; what we have here is a coordinated plan, which finds support in the fact that ideologies and life attitudes are in some way now incorporated in a logic of social automatism," he said.

According to Vernardakis, there were two versions of this, one being the deliberate actions of a criminal gang and the other arising from the attitudes of certain citizens, who "consider that all this is in some way normal."

"The culprits must be arrested, identified and led to justice and there must be a campaign to sensitize society [to the fact] that we are dealing with fascist criminal gangs here," said Vernardakis, who is responsible for coordinating the sum of the government's work.

He was referring to an attack on SYRIZA MP Petros Konstantineas by multiple assailants on Sunday and the death of a 33-year-old drug addict who was fatally injured when assailed by the owner of a jewelry store that he had attempted to rob, as well as other individuals in the vicinity.

Vernardakis said the phenomenon gave cause for concern because it was "asymmetric," with criminal gangs that operated in areas where far-right Golden Dawn had organized cells that "create concentric circles of violence" and thus had to be taken very seriously.