WikiLeaks cables: US tried to stop Garzón
Confirming long-held suspicions, the communications between U.S. diplomats and Spanish government officials included in the massive WikiLeaks cache of diplomatic cables show that the U.S. government urged its Spanish counterpart in the spring of 2009 to stymie the investigation into torture and war crimes at Guantánamo initiated by judge Baltasar Garzón under the principle of universal jurisdiction, El País reports (see also The Guardian). Among those approached by the U.S. embassy were members of the Spanish government and the Attorney General’s office (Fiscalía General). The leaked cables show that similar pressures were exerted in relation to other judicial cases, notably the investigation into the death in Iraq of the Spanish cameraman José Couso, and the case of the secret U.S. flights transporting prisoners for purposes of “extraordinary rendition.”
[…] The cables also reveal that the US pressured the Spanish government to force Garzon to drop his investigation into the death of a Spanish reporter who was killed by US shelling in Baghdad, into allegations by Spanish Guantanamo detainees of being tortured and of the use of Spanish bases for CIA “rendition” flights (in which the CIA kidnapped foreign nationals and transported them to prisons in countries that openly practiced torture). See https://albavolunteer.org/2010/12/wikileaks-cables-us-tried-to-stop-garzon/ […]