FINAL ARGUMENTS were heard in Madrid yesterday in the case against Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, accused of abusing his powers by investigating the crimes committed by the former dictator, Gen Francisco Franco, and his supporters, during and after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).
It remains for the seven supreme court judges to reach a majority verdict, which will be announced – or leaked – sometime in the next few weeks.
Mr Garzón is a hero to human rights activists in Spain and internationally, ever since he sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, the landmark extradition of the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in 1998, for crimes against Spanish citizens committed abroad.
But he could now face disbarment for the rest of his career if this court finds him guilty.
The prosecution, brought privately by a far-right group Manos Limpias (“Clean Hands”), yesterday charged that Mr Garzón had acted “in bad faith” and committed a crime against “democracy and justice”.
The Manos Limpias lawyer, Joaquín Ruiz Infante, insisted repeatedly that Mr Garzón was guilty of ideological bias, because he had investigated only the Franco regime’s mass “disappearances” of left-wingers, and not all the crimes of the Civil War.
He reminded the court that, 14 years ago, Mr Garzón had summarily dismissed a case against the Communist Party leader, Santiago Carrillo, for his alleged involvement in the notorious wartime massacre of right-wing prisoners at Paracuellos in 1938.
Mr Garzón’s defence is that the victims at Paracuellos were honoured and given decent burials after Gen Franco won the war, whereas many thousands of left-wing victims of mass killings still remain in unmarked mass graves all across Spain, 70 years later.
Likewise, the relatives of the Paracuellos victims were compensated with jobs. In contrast, the relatives of the victims of the Franco regime, who asked Mr Garzón to take up their case, were left destitute, and often ostracised and persecuted as “reds”.
The heart-rending testimonies of surviving relatives have been recounted at length to the court over the last week, turning the trial into exactly what Manos Limpias wanted to prevent – a public indictment of the dictatorship.
Moreover, the relatives made it clear again and again that they are not seeking retribution against the individuals who tortured and killed their loved ones (should they still be alive). They simply want public recognition that they were the victims of crimes against humanity, and have a right to a decent burial. The prosecution yesterday ignored these testimonies. Seemingly shooting himself in the foot again, Mr Ruiz Infante made a remarkable admission yesterday.
He argued that mass “disappearances” were part and parcel of Franco’s political strategy, and therefore exempt from investigation under a 1977 amnesty, which drew a veil over “political violence” from either side. This is hardly what those Spaniards who regard the dictatorship with warm nostalgia wished to hear said in court.
Mr Garzón responded that “my conscience is clear because I took the decisions that I believed to be in accordance with the law . . . to investigate, pursue and punish . . . massive crimes of forced disappearances.”
He said he believed Spain’s institutions owed this much to the victims, and to historical memory.
Many agree with him. The state prosecutor and three of the seven supreme court judges, have said they do not believe he has committed any indictable crime.
Yet the Spanish judicial system is highly politicised, and the career of this remarkable if controversial magistrate could be brought to a premature end by a majority of his own peers.