MADRID--Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon, testifying at his own trial, told a court on Tuesday that relatives of victims of right-wing dictator General Francisco Franco had a right to justice despite a 1977 amnesty.
Garzon, best known for securing the 1998 London arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, is accused of abusing his powers power in investigating some 114,000 suspected murders during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War and the four-decade dictatorship that followed.
"They were describing a systematic elimination and thousands of those remain 'disappeared' today," Garzon, sitting at a small wooden table, told seven supreme court justices.
The prosecution--brought by private parties, not the state--claims Garzon violated the amnesty. He argues that the forced disappearances under Franco were crimes against humanity that could not be the subject of an amnesty under international law.
It is one of three criminal cases against him that divide d public opinion in Spain. While some people back the trials, many believe they are a politically motivated attempt to bring the high-profile human rights campaigner down or to prevent a truth commission into the dictatorship which ended with Franco's death in 1975.
If found guilty of any of the charges against him, the 56-year-old could receive a 20-year ban from working as an investigating magistrate in Spain. Thousands of people rallied in Madrid on Sunday against the trials. Among them were Spaniards who say their relatives and friends were murdered or tortured by Franco's troops.
"We're confused, terrified, indignant, embarrassed," poet Luis Garcia Montero told demonstrators in a square near to the Supreme Court where Garzon is on trial.
Unionists, left-wing politicians, human rights groups, legal experts and artists like film directors Pedro Almodovar have all criticised the prosecution.
Garzon is also accused of having benefitted financially from courses in New York sponsored by big companies and having breached defendants' rights by allowing the recording of conversations between lawyers and their clients in a corruption case involving members of the centre-right People's Party. "It's embarrassing that in Spain, which was a pioneer in opposing genocides, representatives of the old fascists have put the judge in the dock that wanted to investigate the crimes of fascism," Garcia Montero said.
