ALBA's James D. Fernández is interviewed by the Spanish press about the baffling court case around Garzón's stay as holder of NYU's King Juan Carlos I Chair. The case was eventually closed. Read the interview here (in Spanish).
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James D. Fernández, vice-chair of ALBA and professor of Spanish at NYU, has an op-ed in today's El País commenting on some of the more Kafkaesque chapters of the witch-hunt against Judge Garzón--and the collateral damage inflicted on those who found themselves in the crossfire. Read the piece here.
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In a statement just published, Judge Garzón has expressed his “frontal rejection” of the ruling by his country’s Supreme Court that has sentenced him to an 11-year disbarment. This rejection is based on his understanding that the ruling has been “unjust and predetermined,” employs spurious arguments, and lacking in evidence; he vows to use...
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The Guardian's Giles Tremlett covers the protest meeting in Madrid. More reports in the LA Times, the Daily Beast, the BBC, the New York Times, and the Associated Press. ""It looks like Garzón's enemies got what they wanted," HRW's Reed Brody told Tremlett, "… the criminal prosecution of...
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María Garzón, daughter of Baltasar Garzón, has published an open letter in response to the Supreme Court ruling that sentences her father to 11 years of disbarment:

This letter is addressed to all those who today break out the champagne to toast to the disbarment of Baltasar Garzón.

To you, who...
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Judge Garzón has been sentenced to an 11 year suspension and a 2,500 euro fine for prevarication in relation to his investigation of a wide-ranging corruption ring involving the Valencia branch of the ruling conservative Partido Popular. The Supreme Court tribunal judging the case voted unanimously to find the judge guilty. This is the...
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"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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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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