Argentinians want to investigate Franco's crimes

By Sinikka Tarvainen Apr 15, 2010, 5:43 GMT

Madrid - When Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon began investigating human rights abuses committed by Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship, he gave a boost to Argentine attempts to pursue such crimes in the Latin American country.

About a decade later, Argentine human rights activists want to return the favour by launching an Argentine judicial inquiry into the crimes of Spain's 1939-75 dictator Francisco Franco.

Lawyers representing two Argentine residents Wednesday filed a lawsuit seeking an inquiry into the deaths of the plaintiffs' Spanish relatives, who were killed during Spain's 1936-39 civil war between Franco and the republican government.

There is widespread outrage in Argentina over the treatment that is being given to Garzon in Spain, where the late Franco's Falangist party and two far-right associations have taken the 54-year-old National Court judge to court.

Supreme Court judge Luciano Varela is preparing to try Garzon, whom he accuses of overstepping his authority in trying to launch Spain's first judicial investigation into Francoist killings.

'Nobody in Argentina can understand' the potentially career-ending proceedings against the judge who 'did the most to pursue crimes committed by dictatorships,' Argentine human rights lawyer Carlos Slepoy said.

'Spain continues living like during the 40-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco. There is a kind of silence of accomplices,' plaintiff Dario Rivas, whose father was shot dead in Spain in 1936, said in a letter read out by his niece in Buenos Aires.

Garzon rose to worldwide fame over his investigations into Latin American human rights abuses, including a failed attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998.

His Argentina-related inquiries led to the arrests of several Argentine suspects, including former navy captain Adolfo Scilingo, whom a Spanish court sentenced to more than 1,000 years in prison for helping to throw government opponents down from airplanes.

Yet when Garzon launched a domestic probe into crimes committed by Francoists during the civil war and the ensuing dictatorship, accusing Franco of the disappearances of more than 100,000 opponents, he was forced to drop the inquiry within a few months.

Unlike Germany, France, Italy, Chile or Argentina, Spain never took legal action against its former dictatorial regime, and many people who profited from Francoism do not want that ever to happen, Garzon's supporters argue.

Since Garzon abandoned his investigation, ageing family members of Franco's victims 'continue dying' without having been given the chance of retrieving the lost remains of their loved ones, Emilio Silva told the German Press Agency dpa.

Silva represents the Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory (ARMH), which says that tens of thousands of Franco's victims remain buried in mass graves across the country.

Judge Varela says Garzon has ignored the 1977 amnesty granted for civil war era crimes with which Spain tried to leave old divisions behind.

That attempt has, however, not been entirely successful, with leftist critics now accusing the Supreme Court of having become an instrument of Franco's 'fascism.'

The Garzon case is threatening to undermine the reputation of the Spanish judiciary, which now faces the embarrassing possibility of being overshadowed by Argentine courts.

'We hope that Argentina will do justice to Franco's victims, since Spain was not capable of doing it,' Silva says.

The plaintiffs in Argentina, who are backed by dozens of human rights associations, are seeking an investigation into whether any of those responsible for the deaths of their relatives are still alive.

The idea is to widen the probe into a general investigation into Franco's crimes, Argentine human rights lawyer Binusz Smukler told the Spanish daily El Pais.

The plaintiffs want to implement the principle of universal justice in genocide and crimes against humanity, which Garzon himself has often invoked in his human rights investigations.

After dropping his Franco inquiry, Garzon transferred it to regional courts.

Yet hardly any of them have taken it up, and Spain cannot reject an eventual Argentine inquiry on the grounds that it overlaps with a Spanish one, Silva said.