"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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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"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...
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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...
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Garzón's successor at Spain's National Criminal Court, Judge Pablo Ruz, has sent the prosecutor a 19-page brief reactivating the investigation of human rights abuses and war crimes at the detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, El País reports. Given the lack of judicial action on the part of the US and British authorities, Ruz...
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A group of prominent Spanish intellectuals including the poet Luis García Montero and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar  have rallied to the support of Baltasar Garzón, the crusading Spanish magistrate who last year received the first ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. So have Human Rights organizations worldwide. In the next two weeks, Garzón will...
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