Some information about the judge presiding over the case of the Bush 6

[ck4829]

A high-profile Spanish judge has initiated a possible investigation of alleged torture and war crimes by six former U.S. officials who created the legal framework for interrogations at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a senior Spanish official said Saturday.

Judge Baltasar Garzón, of Spain's highest court, requested that a prosecutor examine a complaint that inmates-rights advocates had filed against Bush administration officials last year, said the senior official, who requested anonymity.

The prosecutor will issue a recommendation on the merits of opening a case and on whether the court, the Audiencia Nacional, has jurisdiction, the official said. The prosecutor probably will respond by the end of April to Garzón, Spanish media reported Saturday.

The six former U.S. officials named in the complaint include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; William Haynes II, a former counsel at the Defense Department; and John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer, the senior official said. They are seen as the brains behind the framework of policies and legal opinions that created the Guantánamo facility, who justified harsh interrogation tactics and decided that captured al-Qaida suspects were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008942565_spain29.html

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, 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 refused Garzón's request to have Pinochet extradited to Spain on grounds of Pinochet's health.

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.

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.

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.

On October 17, 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltazar_Garzon

This guy knows evil when he sees it.