Former Chief Prosecutor lambasts Spanish Supreme Court
Carlos Jiménez Villarejo
In a strongly worded op-ed piece in today’s Público, Carlos Jiménez Villarejo, former Chief Prosecutor for corruption cases, chides the Spanish Supreme Court for the cavalier way in which it recently dismissed Judge Baltasar Garzón’s appeal. (More background here.) According to Jiménez, the Supreme Court should have given much more serious consideration to the arguments presented by Garzón’s defense, and engaged in a much broader discussion about the laws involved. Jiménez also points out that the Court’s decisions in the Garzón case have consistently hewn to the line of the extreme Right, in spite of the consistent opposition of the Court’s prosecutor. The Court’s deference to the Right stands in sharp contrast with its utterly dismissive attitude toward the victims of Francoism and their families–who brought the case to Garzón to begin with–denying them any role in the trial against Garzón, and telling them instead to “abstain from disturbing the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction” (“se abstengan de perturbar la jurisdicción del TS”). “We are facing a profound crisis,” Jiménez concludes, “no only a crisis of Justice but of democracy.” More here.
