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Latin America Feels the "Garzón
Effect"
By Daniela Estrada*
SANTIAGO (IPS) - Latin America
owes Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who
is facing prosecution in his country for
trying to investigate Franco-era abuses,
for the groundbreaking invocation of
legal principles that have led to trials
for crimes against humanity in
Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru and
Uruguay, human rights lawyers say.
Chilean lawyer Roberto Garretón coined
the phrases "the Garzón effect" and "the
Pinochet effect," after the Spanish
magistrate tried to extradite former
Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet
(1915-2006) from Britain in 1998 to try
him for crimes against humanity
committed during the 1973-1990
dictatorship he led.
Pinochet, who was arrested while
recovering from surgery for a slipped
disc in a London clinic, ended up
spending more than 500 days under house
arrest in the British capital until the
government of that country released him
on humanitarian grounds. After the
dictator returned to Santiago, he faced
legal action for human rights abuses and
embezzlement, but he was never
convicted.
In any case, prosecutions for murders,
forced disappearances and torture
committed by the dictatorship increased
exponentially after 1998.
"The 'Garzón effect' means judges all
over the world learned that it was
possible to do justice" in the case of
crimes against humanity, and "the
'Pinochet effect' means that it's not a
good idea for any human rights violator
to travel," Garretón, a former United
Nations special rapporteur on the human
rights situation in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, told IPS.
In other words, the principle of
universal justice began to be applied,
according to which no amnesty or statute
of limitations applies to crimes against
humanity, whose perpetrators can be
tried in any country if they are not
prosecuted in the country where the
crimes were committed.
But now Garzón is in the dock himself,
on charges of overreaching his powers by
attempting to clarify the fate of an
estimated 114,000 victims of forced
disappearance during Spain's 1936-1939
civil war and the early years of the
1939-1975 dictatorship of Gen. Francisco
Franco - crimes that were amnestied in
1977, two years after the dictator's
death.
The magistrate, who sits on the
Audiencia Nacional - Spain's highest
criminal court - faces up to 20 years'
suspension from the bench in the case
brought by far-right groups in Spain,
which argue that his investigation
violated the amnesty law.
"What Spain is doing now is a reversal
of the Garzón effect," said Garretón.
Spain's "superjudge" is also facing
trial in two other cases - the "Gurtel
case" affecting the right-wing
opposition People's Party (PP), in which
Garzón is accused of illegal wiretapping
of the defendants facing corruption
charges; and for dropping tax fraud
charges against Santander Bank
executives.
In the second case, Garzón was accused
of receiving financing from the
Santander Bank for his sabbatical year
at New York University. The university
has denied, however, that he received
money - directly or indirectly - from
the bank, which merely sponsored a few
events there in which he participated.
"Garzón's actions had extraordinary
importance in the (2003) repeal" of
Argentina's two amnesty laws that let
human rights violators off the hook,
Argentine lawyer Carlos Slepoy told IPS.
The lawyer lives in Spain, where he
represents the families of victims of
Argentina's 1976-1983 military
dictatorship.
"The overturning of the amnesty laws,
which occurred first in Congress (and
was ratified by the Supreme Court in
2005) happened after Garzón sought the
arrest and extradition of 46 former
military and civilian officials of the
regime, many of whom were high-ranking
officers who enjoyed total impunity,"
Slepoy said.
In response to the prosecution Garzón
currently faces in Spain, Slepoy and
other human rights lawyers brought a
lawsuit on genocide charges in
Argentina's courts on behalf of the
families of two former Spanish mayors
who were killed by pro-Franco forces in
Spain.
"Garzón's actions that led to Pinochet's
arrest, and his attempt to try former
Argentine officials were vital to the
decision by Spain's Audiencia Nacional
to accept the case on genocide in
Guatemala," Benito Morales, a lawyer for
the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation, told
IPS.
In 2006, the Audiencia Nacional issued
an international arrest warrant for the
extradition to Spain of Gen. Efraín Ríos
Montt and seven other former Guatemalan
military and civilian officials from his
de facto regime, on charges of torture,
state terrorism and genocide. None of
the accused are in prison.
The lawsuit was originally filed in
Spain in 1999 by Guatemalan Nobel Peace
Prize-winner and indigenous activist
Rigoberta Menchú and other survivors of
the atrocities committed during the
armed conflict.
Ríos Montt carried out a "scorched
earth" campaign when he governed
Guatemala from March 1982 to August
1983, considered the bloodiest period of
the 1960-1996 armed conflict that left
more than 200,000 - mainly rural
indigenous people - dead or
"disappeared."
According to Garretón, the door opened
up by Garzón also influenced the Chilean
court decision to extradite former
Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori
(1990-2000) to his country in 2007.
Last year, Fujimori was sentenced to 25
years in prison for ordering killings
and kidnappings by military
intelligence, in connection with two
massacres in which a total of 25 people
were killed in 1991 and 1992.
The Chilean lawyer also said that
without the "Garzón effect", Uruguay
would not have extradited three
Uruguayan army officers to Chile in
2006. The three officers were involved
in the kidnapping and murder of chemist
Eugenio Berríos, who had worked for the
Pinochet dictatorship’s secret police
and whose body was found on a beach near
the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, in
1995.
In Garretón's view, that helped pave the
way for the sentencing of former
Uruguayan dictator Juan María Bordaberry
(1973-1976) to 30 years in prison for
violating the constitution when he
backed a military coup that kept him in
power for three more years (the
dictatorship ended in 1985).
Human rights violators who have not
escaped the principle of universal
justice are former Chilean military
prosecutor Alfonso Podlech and former
Argentine navy officer Ricardo Cavallo,
who worked at ESMA, the dictatorship's
largest and most notorious torture
centre.
Podlech was arrested in 2008 in Spain
and extradited to Italy, where he is on
trial for the forced disappearance of
former Chilean-Italian priest Omar
Venturelli, while Cavallo was arrested
in 2000 in Mexico and extradited first
to Spain and then to Argentina, in 2008,
where he is facing prosecution.
Garretón also mentioned the case of
retired Uruguayan military officer
Manuel Cordero, extradited in January
from Brazil to Argentina to face trial
for crimes against humanity committed
under Operation Condor, a coordinated
plan among the military regimes that
ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and
1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing
and eliminating left-wing opponents.
And in Paris, 15 former military
officers active in the Pinochet
dictatorship are being tried in absentia
for the forced disappearance of four
Franco-Chileans.
*With additional reporting by Marcela
Valente in Argentina and Danilo
Valladares in Guatemala. |
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