NY Times cover Franco’s victims case in Argentina
Darío Rivas, one of the Spanish plaintiffs in the Argentine case against Francoist criminals. Photo Eilís O’Neill.
Raphael Minder, writing for the New York Times, highlights the recent indictments of former Francoist officials by the Argentine judge who, invoking universal jurisdiction, has taken up the case brought by victims of the Franco regime:
When the Argentine judge in the case, María Romilda Servini de Cubría, issued arrest warrants recently for four former Spanish officials, she relied on the same principle of universal jurisdiction for human rights issues that the crusading Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón invoked in the 1990s when he tried to prosecute Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.
Two of the four are dead, but the other two — Jesús Muñecas and Antonio González Pacheco — are expected to be summoned soon by a Spanish judge.
Even if Spain refuses to extradite the men, the request alone is “a very important moral sanction on the Franco regime, which also shows Franco’s victims that they can count on international support,” said Victoria Sanford, professor of anthropology at City University of New York.
Read the whole articles here.
