By Terance Walsh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MADRID, Spain — Baltasar Garzon, a well-known judge in Spain, was acquitted Monday of abuse of power charges.  His charge stemmed from his alleged improper investigation of human rights violations under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

Spain’s Supreme Court acquitted Garzon on a 6-1 vote.

The prosecution was brought by right wing private groups, as allowed by Spanish law, led by the group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands).  They accused Garzon of ignoring Spanish amnesty laws when he investigated human rights abuses that occurred between 1936 and 1975.

Franco led a military uprising in 1936 that set off three years of civil war in Spain that ended with Franco’s forces defeating republican and left-wing fighters.  He remained in power until he died in 1975.

Garzon has said that crimes against humanity deserve no amnesty because they are “permanent crimes.”

In 2008 Garzon began an investigation of the disappearance of tens of thousands of people in the build up to Franco’s rise to power.  The investigation included the excavation of mass graves.  Ultimately an appellate court ended the investigation and the next year Manos Limpias brought the prosecution.

Relatives of the victims of Franco’s human rights offenses have been some of the strongest supporters of Garzon.  They have seen the judge as their hope for justice

The groups bringing the prosecution supported their allegations by saying Garzon’s investigation “reopened wounds which we Spaniards – whatever our political beliefs – had totally recovered from.”

Human rights groups applauded Garzon’s acquittal.  “The Supreme Court has spared itself further embarrassment by rejecting these ill-advised charges,” Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch said. “Investigating torture and ‘disappearances’ cannot be considered a crime.”

In addition to the Franco investigation charges, Garzon is under fire for ordering wire taps of conversations between remand prisoners and their lawyers regarding a corruption case.  The lawyers filed suit alleging a constitutional violation of their constitutional right to confidential communications with their clients.

Garzon contends that the wiretaps were supported by state prosecutors, who did not file charges against him.  The wiretaps were ordered on suspicions that the subjects of the taps were involved in a money laundering scheme.  He was suspended from the bench for 11 years.

Supporters of Garzon argue that these convictions are meant to be retaliation for Garzon’s activism.  “It was clear they were out to get him, and now they have,” said Emilio Silva, head of the Historical Memory Association that campaigns to shed light on Francoist killings. “It is very sad. Plenty of other judges have committed the same irregularities and have not been treated this way.”

Garzon argued in a statement through his lawyers “that the Supreme Court sentence seriously violated several of the fundamental rights which he, as all citizens have under the constitution, as well as his judicial independence.”

Accordingly Garzon filed his papers with the Supreme Court to appeal the decision.  This request, however, is expected to fail and Garzon plans to appeal to the Supreme Constitutional Court.

Although human rights groups applauded Garzon’s acquittal on the Franco investigation charges, they continue to push Spain for accountability for its past misdeeds.

“It is a scandal that Spain has not yet tackled its dark past,” said Marek Marczynski, Amnesty International’s Head of International Justice.  “News about Judge Garzón is a step forward. However, what we want to see next is a full investigation into the catalogue of abuses that took place during the Civil War and Franco’s regime. There must be no impunity in Spain for these most horrible crimes.”

Amnesty International calls on Spain to continue its remediation of its past human rights abuses and set aside its law granting amnesty for crimes committed under Franco.

For more information please see:

Amnesty International — Spain: Ruling On Baltazar Garzon Is Good News, But Crimes Remain Untackled — 27 February 2012

BBC — Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzon Cleared On Franco Probe — 27 February 2012

CNN — Former Spanish Judge Acquitted Of Abusing Power — 27 February 2012

Expatica — Spanish Judge Asks Supreme Court To Annul Verdict — 22 February 2012

The Guardian — Baltazar Garzon, Judge Who Pursued Dictators, Brought Down For Wiretapping — 9 February 2012

NY Times — Truth On Trial In Spain — 4 February 2012

By Alexandra Halsey-Storch
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

STRASBOURG, France–On Thursday, February 23, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that, “it is a violation for states to collectively expel migrants intercepted on high seas.”

In 2009, the subjects of the case, 11 Somali and 13 Eritrean nationals, boarded a boat and left for Italy in search of a better life. They were part of a larger group of about 200 migrants, including pregnant women and children. Just outside of Italian territorial waters, south of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, Italian military vessels picked the migrants up and took them to Tripoli, Libya’s capital. There, they were handed over to Libyan authorities who incarcerated them for at least several months.

This procedure was arranged by then-Italian President, Silvio Berlusconi and Libya’s then-dictator, Moammar Ghadafi, in an effort to “stem the huge tide of immigration to Italy.”  Under this course of action, about 1,000 migrants were “forcibly returned to Libya by the Italian Cost Guard,” according to the United Nations.

The attorney for the African migrants alleged that this bi-lateral agreement between the two countries violated Article 3, Article 4 of the Protocol Number 4, and Article 13 of the Geneva Convention thereby violating their human right to seek political asylum. The European Court of Human Rights agreed.

The Court Opinion recognized that, through the bi-lateral agreement, Italy attempted to alleviate some of the problems associated with a great influx of migrants; however, the Court went on to articulate that a State is not absolved of its “obligation not to remove any person who would run the risk of being subjected to treatment prohibited under Article 3 in the receiving country.”

Article 3, which governs civil armed conflict, prohibits members of the armed forces from engaging in “violence to life and person, in particular murder…mutilation, cruel treatment and torture” against civilians and innocent bystanders.

Looking back to the “situation prevailing in Libya” at the time migrants were forced there in 2009, the Court determined that they could have been subjected to the aforementioned Article 3 prohibitions. Moreover, bringing the African migrants to Libya exposed the migrants to the “risk of arbitrary return to their countries of origin,” also in violation of Article 3. The Court determined that in 2009 Somalia remained a place of “widespread insecurity” and individuals in Eritrea “faced being tortured and detained in inhuman conditions merely for having left the country.”

The court also ruled that a country is not permitted, under Article 4 of Protocol Number 4, to collectively expel migrants captured at sea, iterating that, “we have long expressed alarm at the interception and collective expulsion of migrants, often risking their lives on the high seas, without opportunity for an individual examination of their cases.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, “cheered” the Court’s decision and called on “all states to recognize and respect the fundamental rights of all migrants, which are guaranteed by international law.” She also encouraged states to consider “human rights and protections enshrined by international law” when writing migration policies and laws.

For more information, please visit:

The United Nations – Rights of Migrants Upheld by European Court – 24 Feb. 2012

European Court of Human Rights – Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy – 23 Feb. 2012