He has place dictators, torturers, terrorists and drug barons within the dock. Now, he himself faces a unprecedented battery of criminal charges.
The already astonishing drama surrounding Spain's crusading "superjudge", Baltasar Garzón, hit a replacement peak as corruption was added to the fees against him and thousands of his supporters blocked streets round the supreme court in Madrid.
The continuing trials faced by Garzón over his controversial investigations into mass killings by the Francoist dictatorship and corruption within the ruling People's party (PP) have already seen his case compared to France's infamous Dreyfus affair. "This is deplorable and intolerable," said the Workers' Commissions trade union leader, Ignacio Fernández Toxo, at the demonstration.
But a contemporary charge of taking bribes from Santander bank whereas on sabbatical at big apple University, that has been angrily denied by Garzón and every one those concerned, has fuelled worries that the world's most famous human rights investigator is being subjected to a concerted campaign of persecution. "I am facing the firing squad, however I've asked them to require off the blindfold," the person who had Chile's General Augusto Pinochet arrested said in an aside throughout one among 3 trials he currently faces for alleged abuse of his powers.
On Tuesday, for the third week running, he returns to the supreme court, where he sometimes sits stern-faced in his black magistrate's gown with embroidered cuffs below a painted ceiling that includes child-throttlers and knife-wielding assassins.
He is accused of perverting the course of justice by gap an investigation into the fate of 114,000 individuals killed by Francisco Franco's regime. Garzón believes he can win his case on attractiveness, however has long been convinced supreme court judges are determined to declare him guilty and expel him from their ranks. "I hope justice can prevail, however it appears to me the unfairness is already there which in any of the cases against me the decision are going to be guilty," he told film-maker Justin Webster whereas watching for the court to mend trial dates.
The zeal with that the supreme court has pursued the cases was highlighted this weekend when newspapers leaked the advice that corruption charges be brought. Supreme court choose Manuel Marchena alleged Garzón had abused his powers to extract sponsorship for courses, receiving cash indirectly.
"I didn't solicit, administer or receive, either personally or through third parties, directly or indirectly, cash or gifts from the entities and companies that sponsored the courses and seminars where i used to be tutorial director," Garzón replied. he's backed by the university.
Friends say that, beneath his cool facade, Garzón goes through non-public hell. "I do raise myself why i'm here," he admitted throughout his initial trial, accused of illegally wiretapping remand prisoners and their defence lawyers within the PP's "Gürtel" corruption scandal.
Global human rights activists raise identical question. "Garzón has created several enemies as a result of he's a choose who causes issues," said Reed Brody, of Human Rights Watch. "But we'd like judges who cause issues, not ones who are subservient to power."
No Spanish investigating magistrate, who prepare cases instead of attempt them, has ever faced 3 such separate however simultaneous trials. several see a conspiracy by jealous colleagues. "If it had been anyone apart from Garzón, they'd never have place him on trial," said a prosecutor who has worked closely with him.
Garzón have to be compelled to this time, initial and foremost, by poking a finger into one among Spain's most sensitive, gaping wounds. In October 2008 he opened an investigation into Francoist crimes. His call swept aside a 1977 amnesty law and challenged a tacit accord that Spaniards mustn't argue over their bloody civil war or the 40-year dictatorship that ended solely with Franco's death in 1975.
Garzón named Franco united of thirty four suspects. The superjudge was deliberately chasing ghosts, as all were dead. The move enraged conservatives, a number of whom see Franco as very little over a benign authoritarian. "It [the Franco regime] was a amount of extraordinary calm," claimed Jaime Mayor Oreja, a former PP interior minister. Garzón would possibly additionally place Napoleon on trial, declared Manuel Fraga, the party's founding president and a former Franco minister. "It is an outrage," he said. "There were amnesty laws."
But circumventing amnesty laws is simply one speciality of a choose who shot to international fame in 1998 when he had Pinochet arrested thus he might be extradited to Spain for the killing of three,000 Chileans.
While several doubted that Garzón's unprecedented use of international human rights law, 2 law lords' rulings allowed for the extradition – effectively agreeing that Chile's amnesty laws allowed different countries to assert jurisdiction. The then Labour home secretary, Jack Straw, stopped the extradition by sending Pinochet home on what were widely seen to be politically convenient health grounds.
But a precedent was set. Some, indeed, see it because the most vital human rights case since the Nuremberg trials, leaving practitioners of genocide and torture with nowhere to cover.
Garzón then had an Argentinian navy captain, Adolfo Scilingo, tried and jailed in Spain for crimes committed thousands of miles away – any extending the reach of international human rights law.
Judges in Chile and Argentina were emboldened by his actions and eventually struck out their amnesty laws. however historical memory campaigners, who hunt down and acquire Franco's mass graves, say the case against Garzón suggests that Spanish judges are currently too scared to require identical path.
"Will Franco's victims have fewer rights than Pinochet's victims?" asked Brody. "Garzón is being tried for applying precisely the same principals he successfully defended in international law."
Even before the Pinochet case Garzón was a controversial, crusading figure in Spain. He took on state-sponsored terrorism during a dirty war against violent Basque separatists, falling out with a Socialist party that had briefly – and controversially – added him to its list of parliamentary deputies. Garzón additionally won huge public support for his pursuit of Galician drug clans and also the armed Basque separatist cluster Eta, even shutting down newspapers and suspending political parties deemed to back terrorism.
The legend of the "superjudge" was born, though Garzón claims to dislike it. "It isn't the choose who is that the star," he said. "It is that the case."
The left-leaning son of a petroleum attendant from the poor, olive-growing southern city of Torres, he has continuously been an outsider. Garzón's father had insisted that, to get on, "you have to be compelled to see the sun rise". By the time he was thirty two, he had become the youngest ever magistrate at the powerful national court.
But he has few friends in his courthouse. solely 0.5 a dozen judges and prosecutors walk the short distance from the national court to the supreme court to supply ethical support before every of his trials.
When a little trade union known as Clean Hands, that has links to the so much right, presented a writ against him for gap the Francoism case, the disregard of the many colleagues soon became clear.
"This writ opened the sector against Garzón," said Clean Hands leader Miguel Bernad, formerly of the pro-Francoist National Front. "Because of his huge ego, he thought that when going against Chile and Argentina, he would apply universal justice here in Spain. however he's not impartial. he's solely curious about rightwing regimes. All he desires is stardom and headlines."
Then a criticism was lodged by the lawyers wiretapped throughout the Gürtel investigation. The allegation that Garzón knowingly dictated a live that was against the law, instead of merely decoding the law during a approach others would possibly disagree with, is hard to prove.
Even those that assume Garzón could be a high-handed choose with a bloated ego agree that, were it not for the Franco investigation, he might need escaped prosecution within the different cases. "The real reason he's on trial is attributable to historical memory, not Gürtel or big apple," said Italian author and economist Loretta Napoleoni, who has written a book concerning Garzón. "But the Gürtel case is kind of stunning, as a result of you only do not listen in to conversations in jail between lawyers and defendants."
Napoleoni believes the wild applause that greeted Garzón's pursuit of terrorism and organised crime visited his head and led him astray. "He is that the fallen star. He has been sacrificed," she said.
Garzón has vowed to fight his cases as so much because the European court of human rights. "If worry or cowardice take root during a choose, then society is lost," he said.
