IN A STARK reversal of roles, an Argentinian judge has taken a step towards opening the first comprehensive investigation into the human rights abuses of Gen Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain.
Judge Maria Servini has asked Spain to declare whether its own courts are investigating cases of torture, murder and disappearance of Franco’s political opponents.
If amnesty laws prevent Spanish courts investigating the cases cited by Judge Servini, which date from 1936 until the dictator’s death in 1975, then she might declare her own court competent to investigate and try crimes allegedly committed by Franco’s henchmen.
In a formal petition to Spain, Judge Servini indicates that the court would investigate allegations of genocide, including tens of thousands of cases of “torture, assassination, forced disappearances and the stealing of children”.
Her request mirrors those made over the past dozen years by Spanish courts which, using international law allowing human rights crimes to be investigated and tried elsewhere if a country cannot do so itself, have brought cases against several military regimes in Latin America.
The Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon famously used this process to order the arrest of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998. In that case, the senior English court ruled that the former dictator should be extradited to face trial in Spain, although Jack Straw, home secretary at the time, finally sent the general back to Chile.
Judge Garzon used the same principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute the Argentinian navy captain Adolfo Scilingo in Madrid in 2005. Scilingo was jailed for throwing drugged political prisoners out of aircraft into the sea.
Argentina later repealed its own amnesty laws and the country now tries dirty-war suspects.
The request by Judge Servini comes after Spanish human rights campaigners took the case to Argentina, claiming domestic courts were effectively closed to them.
They say a decision by the supreme court in Spain to try Judge Garzon for allegedly distorting Spanish law as he tried to open an investigation in 2008 into Franco's crimes proves that Spain is unable to try these crimes itself. – ( Guardianservice)