Baltasar Garzón

Infobox Judge
name = Baltasar Garzón


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caption = (Photo credit: " [http://www.presidencia.gov.ar Presidency of Argentina] .
office = Sala 5 of the "Audiencia Nacional"
termstart = 1987
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birthdate = birth date and age|1955|10|26
birthplace = Torres, Jaén, Spain
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alma_mater = University of Seville
religion = Roman Catholic

Baltasar Garzón Real (born October 26, 1955 in Torres, Jaén, Spain) is a judge in Spain. Garzón currently sits on Spain's criminal court (Sala 5 of the "Audiencia Nacional", also known as National Court), the Audiencia Nacional. He has been the subject of controversy.

International cases

Garzón came to international attention on October 10, 1998 when he issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet over the alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens during his tenure; the Chilean Truth Commission (1990-91) report was the basis for the warrant, although Pinochet's alleged crimes took place well outside the jurisdiction of the Spanish court. Eventually it was turned down by the then British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, who refused Garzón's request to have Pinochet extradited to Spain.

He 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. [http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/04/18/spain.kissinger/index.html]

In April 2001 he requested that the Council of Europe to remove the immunity from prosecution enjoyed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy as a member of the Council's parliamentary assembly. This was rejected.

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. [http://www.trial-ch.org/en/trial-watch/profile/db/legal-procedures/adolfo_scilingo_258.html]

At one point, Garzón had a public and very heated argument with Subcomandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) over the sovereignty of the Basque Country. [http://www.ezln.org/documentos/2002/20021207b.es.htm]

In December 2001, Garzón launched an inquiry into the offshore accounts of Spain's second largest bank BBVA for alleged money laundering offences. In January 2003, he fiercely criticised the United States government over the detention of al-Qaida suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He also campaigned strongly against the 2003 Iraq war.

Garzón issued indictments for five Guantanamo detainees, including Spaniard Abderrahman Ahmad. Ahmad was extradited to Spain on February 14, 2004.

panish cases

In 1993, he went into politics, running for the Cortes Generales ( _en. General Courts) on the party list of then ruling party PSOE. He was also declared head of a strengthened National Plan Against Drugs by Spanish prime minister Felipe González. He resigned this post shortly after, however, complaining of lack of support from the government.

His later investigations helped the conviction of a PSOE minister as head of the GAL state terrorist groups.

He also investigated Jesús Gil, former mayor of Marbella and owner of Atlético Madrid, on grounds of corruption.

Garzón has also fought against ETA: he has instructed many trials against alleged ETA members. In July 1998 he instructed 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 Mr Garzon 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, but Orain SA was already bankrupt, not having been allowed to run operations and publish for years.

In February 2003 Garzón also ordered the closure of Egunkaria, the only newspaper wholly written in Basque language, once again alleging links with ETA, although the evidence was never presented. There was an outcry of public opinion against the closure, especially within the Basque country and abroad. Prominent intellectual figures including Salman Rushdie and Noam Chomsky condemned the closure.

In October 2002 Garzon suspended the operations of the Batasuna party for three years, alleging direct connections with ETA. Later, in February 2008 he also ordered the ban of two Basque nationalist parties: EHAK and EAE-ANVon the same grounds.

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)

*fr icon 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

References

See also

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

External links

* [http://www.spainview.com/people/biog_garzon.html Biography at SpainView]
* [http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/latinam/garzon/Introduction.html Judge Garzón: Introduction to a Life] , article at Stanford
* [http://www.lahaine.org/garzon.htm Desenmascarar a Garzón] , Spanish language articles against Garzón from Basque leftists (2001).