Legal News

Spain's top judge in court in jurisdiction dispute

AP ? MADRID - The Spanish judge famous for indicting Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden appeared in court Wednesday with the tables turned: this time he was a suspect, accused of overstepping his authority in a huge domestic case involving Spanish civil war atrocities.  Baltasar Garzon made no comment to reporters as he arrived at the Supreme Court in a very rare case of a Spanish judge being formally probed in legal proceedings...In May, the Supreme Court agreed to investigate a complaint from an ultraconservative group that accuses Garzon of knowingly acting without jurisdiction in ordering a probe of executions and other abuses of civilians by forces loyal to Gen. Francisco Franco during the 1936-39 civil war and in the early years of the Franco government.  Garzon's drive last year ? Spain's first official probe of such crimes ? was widely seen as seeking an indictment of the Franco regime itself. But he eventually bowed out in a dispute over jurisdiction...