Shadow of Operation Condor? Judge who investigated Pinochet and dirty war leaders could be disbarred

[ck4829]

Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who attained international fame for pursuing leaders like Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, was himself indicted Wednesday on charges of abusing his powers to investigate Spanish Civil War atrocities.

The charges against Mr. Garzón mark an extraordinary reversal for a prosecutor who has also spearheaded Spain’s fight against political corruption and terrorism perpetrated by ETA, the militant Basque separatist group.

Mr. Garzón was indicted Wednesday by a fellow judge, Luciano Varela, on charges of overreaching his authority in October 2008, when he launched a politically sensitive investigation into tens of thousands of deaths and disappearances during Spain’s Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

The controversy over his jurisdiction forced Mr. Garzón to abandon the investigation within a month, and instead hand over to local authorities the task of exhuming unidentified bodies from mass graves.

But legal action was still taken against him by a fringe far-right political group, Manos Limpias, or Clean Hands. It accuses Mr. Garzón of knowingly exceeding his legal purview, in particular by contravening a 1977 general amnesty that covered crimes perpetrated during the civil war.

Mr. Garzón has denied any wrongdoing and is expected to appeal. If found guilty, however, he could be suspended from the bench for up to 20 years, a sentence that could effectively end the career of the 54-year-old judge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/europe/08iht-spain.html

He investigated Pinochet and succeeded in getting leaders of the Dirty War in Argentina to be sentenced to several hundred years in prison, and now a group of lackeys from the Franco regime want to have him removed from the bench because he is doing exactly what he has been doing for years. Let's hope they don't win.

[defendandprotect]

1. KR

[John Q. Citizen]

2. They say that no good deed goes unpunished. I hope in this case, it does.

[Octafish]

3. Garzón is paying the price.

It's the same in every country where fascism has established an institutional foothold.

PS: K&R and it jumped from zero. Who the hell are these unreccers when it comes to questions of fascism?

[pnorman]

4. Thanks for alerting me to that.

I'll be following it closely from now on.