Jim Jump just sent us the latest issue (pdf) of the wonderful newsletter of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, featuring coverage of the 75 anniversary celebrations, a review of the IB musical by Karl Lewkowicz and Judith Johnson, book reviews, and more.  Click here to access the newsletter in pdf.
Read more »

Many thought the day would never come. And yet this past week, a handful of aging victims of Francoist repression appeared before Spain's Supreme Court to tell the horrifying stories of how their parents or grandparents were dragged from their houses and shot by Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War. In other...
Read more »

"Judge Garzón’s trial," the New York Times editorialized yesterday, "is a disturbing echo of the Franco era’s totalitarian thinking." The charge that the judge overstepped his authority when he ordered in inquiry into Franco's crimes are baseless, the paper argues, because "under international law, there can be no amnesty for crimes against humanity and...
Read more »

Thousands of protesters, led a group of prominent writers, actors, and activists, took to the streets in Madrid this weekend to express their indignation at the persecution of Judge Baltasar Garzón. Meanwhile, an increasing number of judicial and human-rights experts in Spain and elsewhere fear that the three Supreme Court cases against the judge...
Read more »

Our friends Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís report: Exactly one year after the release of our film Granito: How To Nail A Dictator at the Sundance Film Festival, the ex-dictator of Guatemala, General Efraín Ríos Montt, was brought up on charges of genocide in a Guatemalan court and placed under house arrest. The culmination...
Read more »

Spanish Supreme Court Judge Manuel Marchena, in charge of the third case pending against Garzón, concluded the investigative stage yesterday with a brief charging the Judge with “cohecho impropio,” that is, the appearance of bribery by accepting a gift from an interested party. Marchena has significantly downscaled the original charge of prevarication, or knowingly...
Read more »

The trial against Garzón "is fueled by domestic political vendettas rather than substantive legal arguments," Dan Kaufman writes in today's New York Times, "and it could dramatically set back international efforts to hold human-rights violators accountable for their crimes."

The Supreme Court’s zeal to try him has little legal basis; rather, it reflects...
Read more »

"A number of countries around the world have reason to be grateful for the unstinting efforts of a Spanish judge who finds himself on trial," The Guardian editorializes today,

Judge Baltasar Garzón's 1998 attempt to extradite General Pinochet from Britain to face charges of human rights abuses relating to the 1973 coup in Read more »

Judge Garzón's first trial before Spain's Supreme Court has started. Garzón is accused of knowingly going against the law ("prevarication") when ordering allegedly illegal wiretaps while investigating a corruption ring involving the regional leadership of the conservative--and now governing--Partido Popular. The trial, which is expected to last three days, involves seven magistrates from the...
Read more »

The international media are gearing up for the upcoming two trials of Judge Baltasar Garzón. "Is it Crash and Burn Time?" Daniel Woolls asks, writing for the Associated Press:

On Tuesday, Garzon goes on trial for allegedly ordering illegal jailhouse wiretaps in a domestic corruption probe. A week later he appears in...
Read more »