search results for "garzon"

Amnesty: Spain losing ground in fight against impunity

October 16, 2010
By
Amnesty: Spain losing ground in fight against impunity

In a press release coinciding with the twelfth anniversary of Judge Garzón's request for detention of Augusto Pinochet (1998) and the second anniversary of his brief (auto) opening an investigation into Francoist crimes against humanity, the Spanish section of Amnesty International has decried Spain's increasingly lackluster record in the fight against impunity,...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Amnesty: Spain losing ground in fight against impunity

The pot calling the kettle black?

October 13, 2010
By
The pot calling the kettle black?

Spanish Supreme Court Justice Manuel Marchena, who is prosecuting Judge Baltasar Garzón for alleged irregularities related to courses taught at New York University in a program cosponsored by some Spanish banks and corporations, has himself frequently given talks and classes paid for by some 25 different corporate sponsorships, Público reveals. Moreover, neither Marchena...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on The pot calling the kettle black?

Exiles’ descendants speak

October 5, 2010
By
Exiles’ descendants speak

This past May Javier Nuñéz, reporting for Deia, interviewed Ludivina García and Ceferino Álvarez (who passed away in August), of the Association of Descendents of Spanish Civil War exiles, on the the Garzón case and the quality of Spanish democracy. When asked what they thought about Garzón being debarred...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Exiles’ descendants speak

Spain’s abandonment of universal jurisdiction

October 4, 2010
By

"Activist judges like Garzón, Andreu, and Pedraz have created a big diplomatic headache for the Zapatero government." An overview of this past two years' developments at Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action:

In October 2009, under great pressure from the United States, the government of Spain decided to limit its own...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Spain’s abandonment of universal jurisdiction

Spanish government to UN: No war crimes investigation

September 29, 2010
By

Impunity Watch at Syracuse University reports:

A representative from Spain told the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday that they would not be investigating alleged war crimes committed during the Francisco Franco dictatorship in accordance with an amnesty law passed by the Spanish government in 1977.  Mexico had called on...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Spanish government to UN: No war crimes investigation

Former Chief Prosecutor lambasts Spanish Supreme Court

September 17, 2010
By
Former Chief Prosecutor lambasts Spanish Supreme Court

In a strongly worded op-ed piece in today's Público, Carlos Jiménez Villarejo, former Chief Prosecutor for corruption cases,  chides the Spanish Supreme Court for the cavalier way in which it recently dismissed Judge Baltasar Garzón's appeal. (More background here.) According to Jiménez, the Supreme Court should have given much more serious consideration to...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Former Chief Prosecutor lambasts Spanish Supreme Court

Bachelet: Historical memory is essential

September 6, 2010
By
Bachelet: Historical memory is essential

EFE reports that former Chilean president Michele Bachelet, visiting in Spain last week, defended the need for historical memory and, in particular, the way in which Chile has dealt with its repressive past through judicial means--notably different from Spain. In response to a question about the controversy surrounding Judge Garzón's attempt to open...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Bachelet: Historical memory is essential

Bay Area Reunion Honors Spanish Judge

August 31, 2010
By
Bay Area Reunion Honors Spanish Judge

The 74th annual Bay Area reunion of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, held in Berkeley, California, on May 30, paid tribute to the legal work of Judge Baltasar Garzón in challenging decades of silence about mass murders conducted during the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. The program, part of...
Read more »

Posted in News | 2 Comments »

Franco’s 30,000 stolen babies

July 27, 2010
By

Read British journalist David Eade's article on recent revelations about illicit adoptions of babies by Francoist families:

In wider Spain during the Franco era it has been established that children were indeed taken from their parents without their knowledge and passed on to an adoptive family. It is reported Judge Baltasar...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Franco’s 30,000 stolen babies

Spain and the World Cup

July 13, 2010
By

José Ignacio Torreblanca, writing for the Financial Times, assesses Spain's victory at the FIFA World Cup in light of the state of the country:

Rarely can sporting triumph have come as such a welcome distraction as World Cup victory has...
Read more »

Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Spain and the World Cup