Baltasar Garzón

Baltasar Garzón
Juzgado Central de Instrucción, number 5.
Incumbent
Assumed office  1987
Born	26 October 1955 (1955-10-26) (age 55) Torres, Jaén, Spain
Alma mater	University of Seville
Religion	Roman Catholic

Baltasar Garzón Real (born 26 October 1955) is a Spanish judge currently seated on Spain's Central Criminal Court, the Audiencia Nacional. He is the examining magistrate of the Juzgado Central de Instrucción No. 5, which investigates the most important criminal cases in Spain, including terrorism, organised crime and money laundering.

In 1993/4 he was briefly a minister in the socialist government. After his return to the Audiencia Nacional, he led a series of investigations that helped convict a PSOE minister as head of the GAL state terrorist groups. Garzón came to international attention on 10 October 1998 when he issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean president, general Augusto Pinochet for the alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens.

Garzón was indicted in April 2010 for exceeding his authority when investigating crimes committed by the Franco regime that were included in an amnesty,^[1] and suspended on 14 May 2010, pending trial.^[2]

Background

Born in Torres de Albánchez, Jaén, Garzón was appointed to the Audiencia Nacional in 1988, and rapidly made his name in Spain by pursuing the Basque terrorist group ETA.^[3]

In 1993, he asked for an extended leave of absence as a judge and went into politics, running for the Congreso de los Diputados (the lower house of parliament) on the party list of then ruling party PSOE. He was also declared head of a strengthened National Plan Against Drugs by Prime Minister Felipe González. He resigned this post shortly after being appointed, however, complaining of lack of support from the government.

International cases

Garzón came to international attention on 10 October 1998 when he issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for the alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens. The Chilean Truth Commission (1990-91) report was the basis for the warrant, marking an unprecedented use of universal jurisdiction to attempt to try a former dictator for an international crime. Eventually it was turned down by British Home Secretary Jack Straw, who rejected Garzón's request to have Pinochet extradited to Spain on health grounds.

Garzón also filed charges of genocide against Argentine military officers on the disappearance of Spanish citizens during Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship. Eventually Adolfo Scilingo and Miguel Angel Cavallo were prosecuted in separate cases. Scilingo was convicted and sentenced to over 1000 years incarceration for his crimes.^[4]

Garzón issued indictments for five Guantanamo detainees, including Spaniard Abderrahman Ahmad and United Kingdom resident Jamil El Banna. Ahmad was extradited to Spain on 14 February 2004. El Banna was repatriated to the United Kingdom, and in 2007, Garzon dropped the charges against him on humanitarian grounds.^[5]

The Bush Six

In March 2009, Garzón considered whether Spain should allow charges to be filed against former officials from the United States government under George W. Bush for offering justifications for torture.^[6] The six former Bush officials are: Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General; John Yoo, of the Office of Legal Counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; Jay Bybee, also at Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. On 29 April 2009, Garzon opened an investigation into an alleged "systematic programme" of torture at Guantánamo Bay, following accusations by four former prisoners.^[7] According to Andy Worthington, writing in the Huffington Post, Spanish newspaper Público reported in September 2009 that Garzón was proceeding to the next phase of his investigation.^[8] Garzón has repeatedly expressed a desire to investigate former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in connection with a plot in the 1970s known as Operation Condor.^[9]

Spanish cases

GAL (1988 - 1995)

His investigations in about 1987 helped the conviction of a Socialist PSOE government interior minister as head of the GAL state terrorist groups.

Operación Nécora

In 1990 Garzón was instrumental in dismantling a major illegal drug importation and distribution network centered around Galicia

Gil (Caso Athletico)

About 1999 he investigated Jesús Gil, former mayor of Marbella and owner of Atlético Madrid, on grounds of corruption. Gil was convicted in 2002 and died in 2004

ETA (1998 2010) Garzón has also fought against ETA: he has presided in many trials against alleged ETA members. In July 1998 he presided in a case against Orain SA, the Basque communication company that published the newspaper Egin and owned the radio station Egin Irratia. Garzón ordered the closure of both and sent some of the company officers to prison, due to their alleged links with ETA. These charges were later dropped for lack of evidence, and the journalists were released. Many years later Garzón imprisoned them again under the allegation of being part of ETA in a "broader" sense. Egin was allowed to reopen years later by the Audiencia Nacional, after all charges were found without foundation. In February 2003 Garzón also ordered the closure of Egunkaria once again alleging links with ETA. In October 2002 Garzón suspended the operations of the Batasuna party for three years, alleging direct connections with ETA. In February 2008 he also ordered the ban of two Basque nationalist parties, which had filled the political space of Batasuna: EHAK and EAE-ANV on the same grounds.

Franco Atrocities (2007 - 2009) On 17 October 2008, Garzón formally declared the acts of repression committed by the Franco regime to be crimes against humanity, and accounted them in more than one hundred thousand killings during and after the Spanish Civil War. He also ordered the exhumation of 19 unmarked mass graves, one of them believed to contain the remains of the poet Federico García Lorca.^[10][11]

On 17 November 2008, Garzón said that he was dropping the case against Franco and his allies after state prosecutors questioned his jurisdiction over crimes committed 70 years ago by people who are now dead and whose crimes were covered by an amnesty passed in 1977. In a 152-page statement, he passed responsibility to regional courts for opening 19 mass graves believed to hold the remains of hundreds of victims.^[12]

Operation Gürtel (2008 - ongoing in 2010)

A major corruption inquiry, code-named "Gürtel" from the name of its ringleader, Franscisco Correa, ("Gürtel" being German for "belt", which is the meaning of "correa" in Spanish), involving bribes to Partido Popular, was led by Garzón. This inquiry has been transferred to alternative courts following his indictment (see below)

Appearance before the Spanish Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of Spain has declared admissible three criminal accusations against Garzón for 'prevarication' which implies using his authority as a judge to intentionally subvert the course of justice. This is a very serious criminal offense punishable by suspension from any (Spanish) judicial activity for up to twenty years. It is not clear why the judicial authorities did not previously institute any internal inquiry or disciplinary proceedings (for example: following the public debate which followed the order of Garzón to open suspected Francoist era mass graves two years earlier, in September 2008), but instead preferred to rely on criminal accusations from two far right Francoist organizations Falange and Manos Limpias in order to indict him. A (Spanish language) résumé of the three cases has been published by a leftist Spanish national newspaper El País.

Crimes against humanity committed by Franco’s government

In October 2008, Garzón opened a controversial inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity committed by the Nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War and the years that followed the war. This action was controversial because the offenses were nearly 70 years old, previous to the concept of crimes against humanity, and a 1977 general amnesty act barred any investigations related to criminal offenses with a political aim previous to 1976. In 2008 the inquiry was suspended. In September 2009, a trade union called "Manos limpias" (Clean Hands) filed a lawsuit against Garzón alleging that Garzón had abused his judicial authority by opening the inquiry. Garzón denied any wrongdoing.^[13]

In April 2010, Garzón was indicted by the Spanish Supreme Court for prevarication for arbitrarily changing his juridical criteria to engineer the case in order to bypass the law limiting his jurisdiction.^[14][15] If convicted, he could be barred from his duties for 20 years. Garzón's indictment has been highly divisive within Spain and controversial abroad.^[1] Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch condemned the indictment, and The New York Times published an editorial supporting him, whereas The Wall Street Journal condemned Garzón's proceedings in an editorial supporting the rule of law.^[16] There were public protests in Spain from left wing organizations supporting Garzón.^[17][18]

The International Commission of Jurists considers that his short-lived inquiry did not justify disciplinary action, let alone criminal prosecution, adding that the prosecution of judges for carrying out their professional work was "an inappropriate and unwarranted interference with the independence of the judicial process".^[13]

On April 24 2010 Garzón presented an appeal to the Supreme Court against the judge investigating the case, Luciano Varela for giving advice to the plaintiffs about the errors in their documents. Garzón accused the judge of partiality, in having "a direct interest in the proceedings and bias in the action" and having "worked closely with the plaintiffs by offering counsel or legal advice" intended help the complainants to correct a defect in their series of indictments to meet a deadline, an action which he defined as "atypical, extra-judicial and prejudicial to one of the parties" (i.e. him, as the accused). According to Garzón, "intervention by the instructing judge is not protected under any provision of the current legal procedural rules and is clearly unrelated to the substantive rules of Spanish court procedure".^[19] Luciano Varela accepted the appeal and temporarily stepped out from the case until the Supreme Court rules on the appeal.

On Tuesday 11 May 2010 Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) requested that the Judiciary of Spain might assign Garzon as a consultant to the ICC for six months,^[20] which would have allowed General Council of the Judicial Power of Spain (La Comisión Permanente Extraordinaria del Consejo General del Poder Juidicial or CGPJ) to avoid suspending Garzon during the impending trial for investigating crimes committed during the Franco era.

In response, Judge Varela bought forward his conclusion that Garzon should stand trial, and the CGPJ rejected the request of the ICC on the basis that it appeared to be simply a personal request by Moreno-Ocampo, rather than an official ICC invitation. On Friday 14 May 2010 Garzón was duly suspended from judicial activity^[21] (with pay) 'as a precaution, pending judgment' as a result of the decision of Judge Varela, which suspension is formally required by Spanish law. The CGPC subsequently declared that it would require five different certificates ('informes' in Spanish) to release Garzón to the ICC as a consultant for six months during his period of suspension from judicial activity. These were: ^[22]

• That the public prosecutor (which opposes the trial of Garzón) certify that there would be no conflict of interest
• That the Supreme Court of Spain (hearing the case against Garzón) would not be delayed or inconvenienced
• That the ICC certify the appointment would not provide immunity for Garzón from either outstanding or future criminal process in Spain
• That Spain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation declare the appointment of Garzón to be in the national interest of Spain
• That the Secretary General of the CGPJ was satisfied that all of the above certificates were appropriate and legally valid for this temporary assignment.

José Manuel Gómez Begresista, the president of the CGPJ's Commission for Studies & Reports, impugned each of the above five conditions, which he characterized as 'ridiculous' since Garzón had previously been assigned to such work, and no immunity from Spanish law attaches thereto. He went on to state that the decision taken by the CGPJ "lacked any legal grounds whatsoever".^[23]

Banco Santander corruption allegation

The allegation is that Garzón archived (adjourned sine die) a case against the director of Bank Santander, Emilio Botín in return for payment for some courses sponsored by the bank in New York between 2005 and 2006.^[24]

This appeal to the supreme court follows a charge previously archived by the criminal court, since the alleged 1.2 million euro fee was deemed by the lower court to be in fact 216,000 euros, which was not paid to Garzón, but to the university foundation.^[25]

Improper eavesdropping order between prisoners and counsel

The accused in a massive corruption inquiry, code-named "Gürtel" sought to have evidence against them ignored. The accused are asking that the evidence be ruled inadmissible, since it was obtained from conversations between prisoners and counsel, which, under Spanish Law, it is claimed, is allowed only in cases of terrorism.^[26]

Bibliography

• Cuento de Navidad: es posible un mundo diferente (Christmas tale: A different world is possible) Ediciones de la Tierra (2002)
• Un mundo sin miedo (A world without fear) Plaza & Janes, S.A. and Debolsillo (February 2005)
• Prologue of ¿Y si mi hijo se droga? Claves prácticas para prevenir, saber y actuar (And if my son uses drugs? Practical tips to prevent, know, and act) Begoña del Pueyo, Alejandro Perales (Editorial Grijalbo) (June 2005)
• La lucha contra el terrorismo y sus límites (The fight against terrorism and its limits) Adhara Publicaciones, S.L. (February 2006)

• (French) Denis Robert, La justice ou le chaos, Stock, 1996. Interviews and portrait of seven anticorruption judges: Bernard Bertossa, Edmondo Bruti Liberati, Gherardo Colombo, Benoît Dejemeppe, Baltasar Garzon Real, Carlos Jimenez Villarejo, Renaud Van Ruymbeke

See also

• Carmelo Soria, Spanish diplomat assassinated in 1976 by the Chilean DINA
• Command responsibility
• Universal jurisdiction

References

External links

• Biography at SpainView
• Judge Garzón: Introduction to a Life, article at Stanford
• BBC News - Profile: Judge Baltasar Garzon