Assange could go to international court

[JDPriestly]

19. Ah!!! The irony:

Criminal proceedings have begun in Spain against six senior officials in the Bush administration for the use of torture against detainees in Guantánamo Bay. Baltasar Garzón, the counter-terrorism judge whose prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet led to his arrest in Britain in 1998, has referred the case to the chief prosecutor before deciding whether to proceed.

The case is bound to threaten Spain's relations with the new administration in Washington, but Gonzalo Boyé, one of the four lawyers who wrote the lawsuit, said the prosecutor would have little choice under Spanish law but to approve the prosecution.

"The only route of escape the prosecutor might have is to ask whether there is ongoing process in the US against these people," Boyé told the Observer. "This case will go ahead. It will be against the law not to go ahead."

The officials named in the case include the most senior legal minds in the Bush administration. They are: Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon's general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/29/guantanamo-bay-torture-inquiry

It is said that Obama stopped Garzon from prosecuting these individuals:

But what really seems to have raised the ire of the U.S. was Garzón’s attempt to indict six former Bush officials for crimes against humanity, including Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo (Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, Douglas Feith (Undersecretary of Defense for Policy), William Hayne (Donald Rumsfeld’s Chief Counsel), Jay Bybee (Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel), and David Addington (Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff).

The Bush 6 constituted a legal team which authorized torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and elsewhere. One might think, on the surface at least, that the incoming Obama administration would want to bring these figures to justice. However, WikiLeaks cables reveal to the contrary that Obama officials pressured to have Garzón removed from the Bush 6 case, which was ultimately dismissed.

If that was not bad enough, cables also reveal that the U.S. pressured the Spanish government to have Garzón drop his investigation into the death of a Spanish journalist who was killed by American shelling in Baghdad. Moreover, Garzón was obliged to abandon efforts to get to the bottom of allegations made by Spanish Guantánamo detainees that they had been tortured. The intrepid Garzón had also sought to investigate the use of Spanish bases for CIA “rendition” flights, which resulted in suspects being transported to third countries which practiced torture. Once again, according to WikiLeaks cables, Garzón was obliged to cease and desist from his important legal work.

Perhaps, as a result of these WikiLeaks disclosures, Garzón feels a certain degree of personal solidarity with Julian Assange. Having irked the powers that be in Washington once before, the Spanish judge is now entering the public spotlight once again.

http://warcriminalswatch.org/index.php/news/40-recent-news/1345-1-25-12-thoughts-about-the-baltasar-garzonjulian-assange-teamup-

Could the revelation that Obama stopped the trial of the Bush leaders for war crimes the real reason that Obama is so angry about Wikileaks?

At any rate, Garzon is a fierce fighter for human rights and justice no matter who the perpetrators are:

Spanish courts, led by the indomitable Garzón, have pursued dictators, torturers and human rights abusers around the globe, pioneering a bold use of international law. They chase Nazi criminals, jail Argentinian torturers and even had Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, arrested in London. Yet crimes committed on their own doorstep are untouchable.

. . . .

One of the ironies of the Garzón case, in which a far-right group called Clean Hands accuses the magistrate of bypassing Spain's 1977 amnesty law, is that people like this are finally being heard in court. In the upside-down world of Spain's relationship with its murderous past, then, it is the investigator who is accused of committing a crime. Men like Lobo have never been placed in the dock. "We victims did nothing to turn the spotlight on them afterwards. Spain's reforms had absolved their masters. Would it have been right to pursue the servants?" the writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán once explained, referring to 1970s police torturers in Barcelona.

Garzón's failed attempt at opening a case against Franco and his henchmen nevertheless set out a devastating narrative for the 1936 rightwing military rebellion that sparked a civil war and toppled an elected government.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/05/baltasar-garzon-trial-franco-crimes

Garzon at least tries to speak truth to power. Very ironic that he is representing Assange. No wonder a country like Ecuador could be persuaded to give Assange asylum.