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Top judge to be tried for Spain atrocioties probe
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Top judge to be tried for Spain atrocioties probe
AFP - 39 minutes ago
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Top Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, seen here in 2009, will stand trial for abuse of power for violating an amnesty by launching a probe into atrocities carried out during Spain's civil war and subsequent dictatorship.
MADRID (AFP) - – Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon was facing trial Wednesday for abuse of power for violating an amnesty by launching a probe into atrocities carried out during Spain's civil war and subsequent dictatorship.
Supreme Court investigating magistrate Luciano Varela decided to press ahead with a case brought against the judge, known round the world for his campaigns against former Latin American dictators, by three far-right groups.
He wrote in his ruling published Wednesday that Garzon knowingly acted without jurisdiction in 2008 when he opened a probe into the disappearance of tens of thousands of people during Spain's 1936-39 civil war and the subsequent dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.
"Conscious of his lack of jurisdiction ... he constructed artificial arguments to justify his control of the penal proceedings," Varela said.
Varela's decision will likely mean that Garzon, a polarizing figure, will be temporarily suspended from the bench of Spain's High Court, which is responsible for cases concerning crimes against humanity, organised crime and terrorism.
Among the groups which filed the complaint against Garzon was the Falange, the party that provided the ideological basis for Franco's rule from 1939 until his death in 1975.
Garzon had argued that the repression and systematic extermination of political opponents during the Franco era amount to crimes against humanity and that the amnesty law passed in 1977, two years after Franco's death, was not valid in this case.
He ordered the immediate exhumation of mass graves -- including one thought to contain the remains of poet Federico Garcia Lorca -- and asked that churches and government ministries provide him with information they had on people who went missing during the conflict and under Franco's rule.
But several months later he transferred the case to provincial courts after state prosecutors questioned his jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed by people who had already died and which were covered by the 1977 amnesty.
More than 200 human rights groups and jurists from around the world have signed a letter in support of Garzon that was sent to Spanish judicial authorities.
"If this trial goes ahead, it will be the first time that we know of where a judge, who is trying to reach truth, justice and reparation for over 100,000 people who disappeared, is tried," the director of the Spanish branch of Amnesty International, Esteban Beltran, told a news conference in Madrid on Wednesday.
Garzon is seen as a hero by leftists and international human rights groups but is accused by some Spanish conservatives of harbouring grudges and of constantly seeking the media limelight with his pursuit of high profile cases.
He once stated that his goal was to change the world, one court sentence at a time.
Garzon made world headlines in October 1998 when he ordered the arrest of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet in London, under the principle of "universal jurisdiction" which held that heinous crimes like torture or terrorism can be tried in Spain even if they had no link to the country.
He also indicted Osama bin Laden in 2003 for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and looked into the deaths of Spaniards in Argentina during the military regime of 1976-83.
But critics like to point out that both his high-profile cases against Pinochet and bin Laden went nowhere. Spain's parliament voted last June to limit the scope of universal jurisdiction to cases involving Spanish victims or if the suspects are on Spanish soil.
Garzon is the target of two other investigations: one into payments he received for speaking at conferences in the United States sponsored by Spanish bank Santander and another into his alleged bias in a probe which he launched into a corruption scandal rocking the opposition Popular Party.
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