Expatiperro

I normally don't post news articles on this blog, but something caught my eye today while I was browsing the New York Times:

Spain's top investigative magistrate opened an investigation into the Bush administration Wednesday over alleged torture of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Judge Baltasar Garzon said documents declassified by the new U.S. government suggest the practice was systematic.

Garzon said he was acting under Spain's observance of the principle of universal justice, which allows crimes allegedly committed in other countries to be prosecuted in Spain. [...]

In a 10-page writ, he said documents on Bush-era treatment of prisoners, recently declassified by the Obama administration, "reveal what had been just an intuition: an authorized and systematic plan of torture and mistreatment of person denied freedom without any charge whatsoever and without the rights enjoyed by any detainee."

There's a lot that I can (and probably should, but won't now) write about this, like whether the torture memos were justifiable, or whether Obama's decision to release them was wise. But since this blog focuses on Spain, I'll hold off on a US-centric angle and write instead from an across-the-pond perspective.

Judge Garzon might be the closest thing that Spain has to a government celebrity. He is Spain's preeminent jurist, and everyone that I've talked to not only knows who he is, but also seems to have a good opinion of him. You might have heard of Garzon before- he was the one who ordered the arrest of Augusto Pinochet, the former military dictator of Chile, on human rights abuses charges, which eventually lead to Pinochet's five-year detention in London.

I'm still not 100% clear on what legal authority he has to order the arrest of non-Spaniards who commit crimes outside of Spain, but he's known as a crusader for justice and for impartiality. That the Bush administration is in his crosshairs doesn't mean that it's a given that anyone will be brought to trail (even Pinochet returned to Chile, and the US would surely resist any extradition attempt); nevertheless, it can't be a good sign fo anyone, not the least the US' image in Europe and around the world.

Yoo, Bybee, and the other torture memo authors better not have any European vacations planned in the future. At least not any that don't have a Spanish jail on the itinerary.