In a remarkably swift reaction to yesterday's news that Investigate Magistrate Baltasar Garzón has requested permission for a seven-month stint as special advisor to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, this morning Justice Luciano Varela of the Spanish Supreme Court has opened the trial against Garzón for...
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The Spanish press reports that Baltasar Garzón, under siege in Spain with three cases pending against him, has accepted an invitation from Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Argentinean chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, to begin working as advisor to the Prosecutor's Office there. Although Garzón has already made his...
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The Supreme court has rejected Garzón's request that Justice Varela recuse himself in the case related to Garzón's attempt to open an investigation of crimes against humanity during the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, and does not agree with Garzón that Varela's request of the plaintiffs to "revise and resubmit" their...
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From this week's issue:

Garzón is usually assigned a leftist role within Spain's internal disputes, but he has routinely irritated people of all political stripes. He is a postideological idealist, a legal crusader who in his own country tirelessly pursues corrupt socialists and conservatives alike and, beyond his national borders,...
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Almería's The Reader reports:

Baltasar Garzón had called on Varela to recuse himself after it became known that the Supreme Court judge had advised those placing written allegations against Garzón, the Falange and Manos Limpias, on how to edit those written admissions to make them acceptable.

Amy Goodman--recipient of the First ALBA Activist Award this coming Sunday, May 2, in New York (tickets still available!)--reports:

Rallies were held around the world this weekend to support a leading human rights judge facing trial in Spain. Baltasar Garzón is accused of overreaching his authority in a probe...
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The Guardian correspondent, and author of Ghosts of Spain, pens a long piece on the topic:

Many Spaniards are amazed by the protagonists who have suddenly reappeared into mainstream debate. The supreme court is acting at the behest of the Falange — the minuscule descendant of the party that provided...
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Scott Boehm writes on the Garzón case in Counterpunch: If Martin Luther King were alive today, he would undoubtedly support Garzón and those brave enough to publicly challenge the state of impunity that is the glaring stain on the sunny, smiley surface that characterizes Spanish democracy. Long after Franco’s death, Spain is segregated...
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Widney Brown, Senior Director of Amnesty International, states:

This is outrageous. As a matter of principle, Amnesty International does not take a position on the merits of the specific charges made against a person under investigation by a court, but in this case – where investigative Judge Baltasar Garzón is...
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Carlos Jiménez Villarejo, a former District Attorney who specialized in anti-corruption cases, writes in El Público on the allegations of bribe against Garzón:

It is reasonable and, above all, just, to demand an immediate dropping of these charges, which, like all of the charges still pending , are completely unfounded....
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