Spanish lawmakers vote to clip judges’ wings
MADRID — Spanish legislators voted Thursday to change a law that let judges indict Osama bin Laden and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, narrowing its scope to cases with a clear link to this country and yielding to criticism that Spain should not act like a global cop.
The reform will not be retroactive, so the dozen or so cases now being investigated at the National Court will continue, the Justice Ministry said. These include investigations of alleged Chinese abuses in Tibet, an Israeli air force bombing in Gaza that killed 14 civilians, and alleged torture at the U.S. prison for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Spain’s two main parties, which are at each other’s throats on just about everything else, joined forces to amend the law in a rare show of unity. The vote in the Congress of Deputies, or lower house of Parliament, was 341 in favor, two against and three abstentions.
The measure now goes to the Senate, where passage is expected because of the bipartisan support.
Under the so-called doctrine of universal justice, grievous crimes such as torture, terrorism and genocide could be prosecuted in Spain, even if they were alleged to have been committed in other countries and had no connection with Spain or its people.
Judges have used it to pursue alleged crimes with no connection to Spain. And countries such as Israel and China complained angrily, prompting the government to push for reform.
Under the new law, Spanish judges will only be able to pursue universal justice cases if the crimes involve Spanish victims or the alleged perpetrators are in Spain.
New York-based Human Rights Watch criticized the vote, saying Spain had been a model in this field of law and now “many victims of serious human rights violations will lose one of the few places they could turn in search of redress.”
“It is deplorable for the Spanish government to capitulate to diplomatic pressure,” said its spokesman, Reed Brody.
The International Criminal Court is the only global war crimes tribunal, but it can only prosecute crimes committed after its founding treaty, known as the Rome Statute, came into force in 2002 — which means it could not prosecute bin Laden or Pinochet. But even the ICC’s reach is limited. It can only launch investigations in countries that have ratified the Rome Statute or where it is ordered to by the Security Council. The United States has not ratified the statute.
The court has indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for atrocities in Darfur, but he does not recognize its jurisdiction and has traveled to several countries without being arrested.
Baltasar Garzon, Spain’s most prominent judge, grabbed world headlines in 1998 when he used the existing Spanish law to indict Pinochet on charges of genocide and torture during his rule and had him arrested during a visit to London. Britain ultimately refused to extradite Pinochet to Spain grounds he was too ill to stand trial.
Garzon also indicted bin Laden in 2003 over the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, although in that case, besides terrorism, there was also a link to Spain: the judge argued that Spain had been used as a staging ground for the suicide airliner attacks against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
Among other cases, Spanish judges also have launched a probe of alleged reprisal killings in Rwanda after the genocide of 1994.
The practical effect of the doctrine has been negligible because extraditions have been extremely rare, and there has only been one conviction, that of an Argentine dirty war suspect in 2005.
Momentum for change started to gather in January after a Spanish judge started probing an Israeli air force bombing in 2002 that killed a Hamas militant in Gaza City but also killed 14 civilians, some of them children.
Israel protested and has called the Spanish proceedings “ridiculous.” Spain’s Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos responded by saying the government would amend the law.
When a Spanish judge started investigating six Bush administration officials in March for allegedly giving legal cover to torture at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. detention facilities, Spain’s attorney general, Candido Conde-Pumpido, said such an investigation should be carried out by the United States, if at all.
The chief justice of the Spanish Supreme Court, Carlos Divar, said last month “we cannot become the world’s judicial gendarme.”
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