Spain’s super judge Garzon indicted for abuse of power in civil war probe

Spain: super judge charged with abuse of power

MADRID — The Spanish judge who went after Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden was indicted Wednesday for alleged abuse of power in a probe of Spanish civil war atrocities.

Luciano Varela, an investigating magistrate at the Spanish Supreme Court, charged Baltasar Garzon with knowingly acting without jurisdiction by launching a probe in 2008 of tens of thousands of wartime executions and disappearances of civilians.

If convicted, Garzon could be removed from the bench for 10 to 20 years, although he does not face jail time. A conviction would effectively end Garzon’s career as a judge, his attorney has said.

Varela’s decision marks a devastating fall from grace for one of Spain’s most prominent and divisive public figures and a man well-known overseas for his cross-border justice cases.

Garzon is a hero to leftists and international human rights groups like Amnesty International, but a headline-loving egotist with a grudge against the right in the eyes of Spanish conservatives.

Garzon will probably be suspended from his post at the National Court in a matter of days and a trial could start as early as June, Garzon’s lawyer Gonzalo Martinez-Fresneda told AP Wednesday.

Varela, who has been investigating Garzon since 2009, argues in his 14-page ruling that, in starting the probe the 54-year-old judge consciously ignored an amnesty decreed by Parliament in 1977 for civil war-era crimes.

Garzon denies any wrongdoing and has defended his probe as legitimate, although he dropped the investigation in a matter of months in a dispute over jurisdiction.

Varela’s charge is that Garzon should never have launched the probe in the first place.

Varela was assigned to the case after the Supreme Court agreed to study complaints against Garzon that were filed by three right-wing groups.

Garzon, who has prosecuted people ranging from Islamic extremists to Basque separatists to Argentine “dirty war” suspects, is arguably one of Spain’s most polarizing figures and a man with many political enemies.