Spanish Judge Investigates Bush Officials for War Crimes
It isn’t quite true these days that, to cite that over-quoted Monty Python sketch, “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” Case in point: Phillipe Sands, a British lawyer with Cherie Blair’s London firm. Last year, he published a book claiming that when the Bush administration came to an end, six of the president’s top-level advisors would face charges in international court.
Sure enough, now Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon wants to charge those six senior policy advisors with “giving legal cover” to alleged torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In a document released on March 29, Garzon names former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales; William J. Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; John C. Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who, according to the New York Times, “wrote secret legal opinions saying the president had the authority to circumvent the Geneva Conventions”; Jay S. Bybee, Mr. Yoo’s former boss at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; David S. Addington, chief of staff and legal advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney; and former under secretary of defense Douglas J. Feith. Garzon charges that the men advised President Bush to ignore Geneva Conventions protocols regarding prisoner interrogation.
Based on the doctrine of “universal justice,” Spanish courts enjoy jurisdiction beyond national borders in cases involving alleged torture and war crimes. Garzon says he is filing this case in the name of five Spanish citizens, former prisoners who claim they were tortured at Gitmo.
Garzon gained international notoriety when he filed similar international indictments against onetime Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, as well as Osama bin Laden. The judge is also currently under investigation himself, for failing “to report that he would be paid [approximately $200,000] during a U.S. sabbatical [at New York University] while drawing his salary in Madrid.” Neither is he universally admired among the Left: Noam Chomsky and Salman Rushdie condemned the judge for shutting down the world’s last Basque language newspaper in 2003, due to its supposed, but never proven, ties to ETA terrorists.
Bush speaks Spanish. I saw him read a few words of it off a teleprompter once. I’m sure he’d have no problem defending his decisions and actions over the past 8 years.
Garzon is not a judge in the anglo-saxon sense. He is a judge of insttruction that is the one who is supposed to coordinate the police investigation and check its legality (eg he isdelivers search warrants and similar). He is a slo a media whotre who time and again has started high profile cases of dubious or null legality and time and gain has has them pulled thm off his hands and filed by the fgrown ups in the Spanish judicial system. All while the cases he was in charge of languished in neglect, leading to the release of major drug smugglers and of terrorists.
While we are at it, remeber the Spanish judge who decided to try Israeli officials for war crimes? The case has has been pulled of his hands and filed.
Didn’t Israel threaten to investigate Spain’s actions in the NATO bombing of Bosnia?
One of my own says:
“Blah blah blah….(insert meaningless Bush dig here)…….blah blah blah” Well done, Kos Kid.
In my opinion the US should tell the Spanish cowards to piss off and go back to tongue-licking the nearest dictators arse. To even entertain this nonsense would be an embarrassment to Obama and his gubment.
“It would criminalize internal U.S. policy-making deliberations, with profound implications for U.S. sovereignty.”
Isn’t this what Obamas plan is?
La plainte vise des actes de torture qu’auraient subi cinq ressortissants ou résidents espagnols détenus au camp de Guantanamo.
seems that what Carson is instructing corresponds to 5 Spanish held in Guantanamo that have been “unjustified” tortured and put in custody there
Also Carzon isn’t only the judge that called Pinochet on trial, but the person that is the most aware of AQ terrorist connections, of the Basques terrorist organisations… that said that Irak war wasn’t justified and that it would open the Pendorra box for AQ international jihadism, and…
and the Americans mustn’t worry about the gesticulaations of a little judge, that apparently no european governments endorse, hey, raison dEtat oblige !
Besides that Spain is the fist state that ordon such procedures after the US ! though he is a “lefty”, apart of that, he seems to be a normal and an experienced person on the danger of international terrist AQ connections. Now , will his enterprise succeed ? I don’t think so, the fish is too big
http://www.voltairenet.org/article12540.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=403881&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
I was one of the very few people who said anything about Harold Koh during the presidential election. Elections have consequences. We may pay an awful price. Indeed, a number of loyal Americans may no longer feel free to travel to Europe. Barack Obama is a self hating American. He is existentially convinced that we deserve such treatment by the “elites” of the world.
The middle finger would be fine response.
What if the US issued an arrest warrant for Garzon just to see how Spain reacts?
For the record. A few mnths ago decided that he had the authority to declare that the crimes pêrpetrated during theSpanish Civil War by the Nationalists (he was not interested in the ones perpetrated by the Republicans) were a genocide and thus weren’t prescribed. Then he asked for the death certificate of Franco. He was quickly laughed out of the case and this filed.
SDo I reiterate, there are a number of judges in Spain who are heavy on crack but fortunately the fgrown ups are still in control and will send Garzon back to his gutter.
Also a biographic note: He had been number 2 of the Sociaist Party anda few weeks ago started (again from own initiative) an investigation on the opposition party all while having intensive contacts with the socialist governement (you aren’t supposed to dine and go hunting with the minister and head cop while investigating the opposition party). Again the case was pulled off hiis hans due to being out of his juridiction and found that it was built on air.
In any normal country Garzon would have been expelled out of the judiciary for groos law violations and would be probably werving time in jail.
JFM, anything is good to know LMAO
Law does not go where enforcement cannot reach. Any Spanish cops show up to arrest an American, they will be sent back home. In a body bag if they are unlucky.
I think somebody has forgotten just who won the Spanish-American War. Stuff like this makes the Isolationists look rational.
The appointment of Harold Koh as counsel in the State Department is a very troubling development, but not one we who watched Obama’s moves long before the election are at all surprised with.
We have just told the world that we will abase ourselves at every opportunity. Even a nutty, corrupt socialist Spanish judge will have his day during which we must grovel before him.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2009/04/07/olbermann-defends-former-left-wing-terrorist-compares-george-washingt
One of the spanish Inquisitors for some reason was in jail for terrorism 8 years ago.
But Olbermann did not mention that the crime Boye was convicted of being involved in was the 1988 kidnapping of Spanish businessman Emiliano Revilla, who was abducted outside his Madrid home and held eight months for ransom in a collaborated effort between the Chile-based MIR and the Spain-based ETA, another left-wing terror group which has perpetrated bombings and killed many in Spain. Olbermann responded to O’Reilly’s complaint that it was a “big omission” for a New York Times article not to mention Boye’s history by rationalizing Boye’s terrorist history. Olbermann: “Well, no, not as big an omission as forgetting to mention that the man whom Mr. Boye`s collaboration with terrorists targeted was the sadistic Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. This is like Bill-O calling George Washington a terrorist.”
The problem with this is Obama is not transparent and surely doesn’t want fereigners digging in his offices and files to find bush material.
The country that provided Franco and tortures Basque rebels now wants to judge everyone.That is what happens when a society becomes senile
I thought we settled sovereignty issues with Spain back in 1898.
All those aging Soviet-era commissars responsible for a stack of corpses 100 million high who are puttering around Europe in comfortable retirement, but these guys only have time for bogeymen in another hemisphere.
These sort of antics just scream “We’re still important. We really are. Aren’t we?”
Obama, “the dextrous”, that talks out both sides of his mouth, will publicly split between saying nothing, or making weak protestations. Deep down, he’ll be lapping up every last second of it, ’cause the left really want Bush (and *especially* Cheney) excoriated, he really wants to demean his predecessor, but he lacks the courage to pull it off.
If this wakes up a few of the less soft-headed on the left to the dangers of letting courts claim international jurisdiction, then Judge Garzon will have performed a great service.
Why does anyone take seriously anything going on in Spain? Their leader is a coward and all the Spaniards who voted for him are cowards. Let me refine my last statement: All the men who voted for the coward are cowards; Spanish women are not cowards, they are very attractive. I once went out with a Spanish woman. Maria was her name, and she was very attractive. She was a little bit chubby, but hell, who am I to be fussy: I’m not exactly Rudolph Valentino, but I’m pretty close.
Well, there’s no shortage of nut-bags out there.
Still Bill, right on the money. Who cares what anyone in Spain thinks? Their country hasn’t been relevant to western civilization since Columbus.
#19 Still Bill
chubby ?
Mr or Mrs Dana
Could you please stop your non-sense about the torture of the ETA murderers (they even got the right to live with their girl friends while in jail) and other subjects you know nothing about?
Garzon is not Spain, he not even represents the executive. Time and again the Fiscalia ie the Public prosecutor ie the part of Spanish judiciary who is the closest to be the voice of the executive has appealed against the non-sense of Garzon and Andreu and time and agin the Spanish judiciary system has forced the filing of their cases.
He will get yet another five minutes of celebrity but that is all.
one of my own: Bush speaks Spanish. I saw him read a few words of it off a teleprompter once. I’m sure he’d have no problem defending his decisions and actions over the past 8 years.
Zing!
#19 Still Bill
fussy?
Spain the land of Inquisitors and Conquistadors should be forced to make reparations to their victims for their actions of the past. Add 500 years of compound interest to it. Spain you owe the world 100 trillion dollars.
JFM,
Also a biographic note: He had been number 2 of the Sociaist Party anda few weeks ago started (again from own initiative) an investigation on the opposition party all while having intensive contacts with the socialist governement (you aren’t supposed to dine and go hunting with the minister and head cop while investigating the opposition party). Again the case was pulled off hiis hans due to being out of his juridiction and found that it was built on air.
here is a report of this fact :
http://www.rue89.com/ibere-espace/2009/02/24/espagne-le-ministre-de-la-justice-a-la-chasse-il-perd-sa-place
seems that Mariano Rajoy (popular party) used this “meeting” to request for the dismission of this minister of justice, in order to get more credit for the next regional elections. Besides this judge has irritated, both the righties and the lefties justice servants, because of the reforms he wanted to undertake.
Hey, some old privileges are good for the profession ; we had the same problems in France when Dati was reforming the profession too.
Also Carzon is known to be the anti-corruption judge, like our former Eva Joly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Joly ; it’s why they can initiate investigations, this is in their normal prerogatives.
Now, Spain as being a latin country, like us and or Italy, some habits have a long life, clientelism, for naming one. It’s not rare that the “priviligieds” go out on the same leasures and or dinner-en-ville parties.
I can attest that Eva Joly was also hated by the lefties and the righties, who found her “heavy on crack” too.
I dunno if she had been still in office, she would may-be have sued the former american administration too, but nonentheless she had no french Gitmo candidate to hang with, so, not viable to undertake a prosecution ; they may-be are stubborn, but not fool, they are just pushing their logic too far.
Let him charge some of the real terrorists who are bombing Israel, or killing their own people to stop any peace process. He wouldent have the guts.
#24 Pat J
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chubby
It’s sad that the Spanish are calling out the USA for failing to keep our own house clean. I really think the best way to preclude such action is to prosecute these persons domestically. Ensure a fair trial, and the internationals can be turned away – “Double Jeopardy” and all that. Hiding under the bed only can take you so far.
Peace.
DS
Could you please stop your non-sense about the torture of the ETA murderers (they even got the right to live with their girl friends while in jail)
umm that’s not what the “political” (terrorism apologists) prisonners are saying :
“Once in Barcelona, they put me in a cell and the ones who later will participate in the interrogations paraded before me. Amongst them, of course, the good police man offered to help me if I was going to talk. However the first three days on in communication were characterised for the physical torture: they hit and twisted my penis and testicles, they pulled my pubic hair and beard with latex cloves and so on.”
http://www.325collective.com/prisons_solidarity_political_prisoners.html
Still Bill, “chubby”; you live dangerously, hombre.
Garzon and his ilk do lawfare because we let them. Note he has never indicted the Iranian Guardian Council in the murder/torture of Col Ritch Griffin in Lebanon, or in the murders of several Spanish troops, even though the evidence is overwhelming.
29. David S.
May be you are the one that needs to be prosecuted, and your house is very dirty, or better, send you to the Funny Farm for the nutjob you are.
# 28. Marie Claude:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fussy
poor Bill.
“It’s sad that the Spanish are calling out the USA for failing to keep our own house clean.”
It’s especially sad, since Spain was one of the countries that launched an unprovoked attack against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia a few years back, which unlike dunking terrorists’ heads under water, really is a war crime. Maybe El Jefe over there in Spain ought to indict his own country’s political leaders for doing that, and keep out of the United States’ business.
And, Pat Leahy can kiss my ass. If we started investigating all the egregious violations of international law and the laws and customs of war committed by Democrats over the last 70 years, there wouldn’t be a liberal outside of jail in the entire United States.
On second thought, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
Mrs Maride Claude
How about, for a change, investigating the Harki and Rwandan genocides and hanging a few French involved in them?
We could also reopen the “collaboration” thing while we are at it.
# 33 Pat J
Until and unless Spain investigates and perhaps prosecutes atrocities committed during the Spanish Civil War by member of the ruling Socialist Party and even family member of the Spanish Cabinet, these judges are nothing but hypocrites and publicity seeking goons.
Mr David S
I am all for the leaders of the anti Vientnam War movement and who later cut or pressured the House for cutting the funding to South Vietnamese Army paying for their responsibility in the Vietnamese and Cambodian genocides.
JFM,
I guess that your CD has been scratched, it’s still replaying the same partition
you perfectly know that these are your own versions vs the historical truths
I already posted you links that show that your country was also involved in Rwanda genocide, but on the Kagame rebel side, of course the latter won’t say that he was sponsered by your state department when he first started the genocide of the Hutu and the assassination of many african personalities of Rwanda neighbour countries, as a secret agent under the code name Kagome, président Habyarimana is one of them…
But if you have a short memory, I can repost them
idem for the Harki, I’ll post you Messmer video, the former general in chief of legionaires, that said that the Harki slaughtering in Algeria should be put on the FLN that was cheating its promises to the Evian agreement.
I am surprised that you advocate the dires of the latter, which was a commie and islamist organisation, which otherwise you condamn fermly elsewhere.
idem for collaboration, compare what it was in the other european countries, France’s anonym majority made more passive resistance to the gestapo investigations for searching jews and or resistants than Belgium, Holland, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yougoslavia, Baltic countries…
do I need to post you the american army report again ?
I wonder why you want absolutely reverse the facts for winning the argument of Franco far-right partisans, that slaughtered many innocent civils too, and don’t forget, some priests too !
Mrs Marie Claude
Let’s me summarize your position and De Gaulle’s: about harkis, about Rwanda, about collabortation with Stalin, about war criminal Hadj Amin Husseini, about deals with Saddam, about Israel.
No matter how light the inconvenience for France and how many thousands or even million people get killed or the hartm done to civilization and liberty, the intererests of France are more important.
The following summarizes admirably De Gaulle’s Mitterrand’s, Chirac’s and also your position:
“Right is, what benefits the German people, wrong is, what harms it.”. It is from Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.
Now excuse me but I have to vomit.
Vomit, my dear, if that makes you feel better
umm, you forgot the Chineses, Tienamen, it’s us, Ho chi min, its us, everywhere the US are failing it’s us… ah, Obama, it’s us !
and don’t tell me you are not making anti-french racism, cuz I going to vomit too
Spanish judge Don Quixote de la Mancha, Phillipe Sands and Cherie Blair have been fooled into thinking they are important. This country should have quit Europe a generation ago IF you accept the proposition that we ever should have been there. Two World Wars and the Marshall Plan were enough–they do not like us and we need not really need to deal with them.
Don Quixote de la Mancha, Phillipe Sands and Cherie Blair should go to work for 7-11 and do something useful with their lives.
JFM, you were not mean to lecture me about my supposed insensibility to the fate of the Harki children : i>Also it saddens me you are so insensitive to the baby’s story. Are you sure you are a woman? Or is it because he was just an untermensch? Such cases were commonplace and anyway after ten fricking months they were still in tents. Not even wooden barracks, tents.
but what about you when it comes to “Los niños perdidos del franquismo” ?
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/ninos/perdidos/franquismo/elpepiopi/20081224elpepiopi_10/Tes
about 30 960 children, mostly girls son and Republicans exiled, imprisoned or shot, were sent to religious boarding schools between 1944 and 1954. Some Spanish media argue further that 12 042 others had been placed under custody of the Franquist State before 1944. A colossal number. Yet, many Spaniards know better the plight of the “lost children” of Argentina than their own.
President Obama welcomes it. The anti-American hating Socialist is going to do more damage in the next 4 years…
The Spanish can go screw themselves. Plain and simple.
Spain really does not contribute much to NATO, since they refuse to have their combat troops (the very few that they do have) exercise with the other NATO troops. So tactically they are useless. They do claim to provide some “logistical” support, which we can get from the Germans and about a half a dozen other countries. They even said they were going to pull their troops out of Kosovo, one of the very few military responsibilities they did have. Other than allowing some of our NATO ships to dock at one or two of their ports and maybe a few of our planes landing at their air bases, Spain doesn’t really do much for us. So my suggestion is to just say “See Ya.” They need us way more than we need them, so we can easily just cast them adrift and let them become another Sweden, which is what they really want to be anyway. We really shouldn’t be worrying about a country that does almost nothing for us anyway.
PS) JFM suite du feuilleton dans l’autre niche, I got some good news for you
Tell the Spanish judge to go to h ,This is America.
The problem is not that our government officials and advisors can be jailed on trumped up, b.s. charges, they can’t, but that these people can be, in effect, made prisoners in their nation, the USA, restricted from international travel and business. Leftists, statists, socialists, democrats, whatever they want to be called, do not care about justice but they do care about power and control. No matter how ridiculous Garzon or Leahy may seem at the moment, thet are for real and are giving a preview of a tactic that will be used with greater and greater frequency by leftists throughout the world, as leftist jurists erase national boundaries and sovereignty and seek to create a universal socialist utopia.
Maybe someone here can explain how this differs from when the US arrested and tried Charles Taylor of LIberia on similar charges.
I want to see if the American people will support Spain in their actions. No one is above justice when it becomes corruption and murder! Bush and administration should rot in prison for their crimes against the world. American and world families have suffered from this misrepresentation of power.
Can a judge from another cauntry beside his investegate crimes like the Judge Baltasar Garzon,(from Spain, who always do?
Can a juzge lique Baltasar Garzon from Spain investigate crimes in other countries beside his country