LEAD: Spanish judge Garzon convicted in illegal phone tapping case

Feb 9, 2012, 14:09 GMT

Madrid - Spain's Supreme Court on Thursday convicted judge Baltasar Garzon for illegally tapping phone conversations between corruption suspects and their lawyers.

Garzon was suspended for 11 years from the legal profession.

The court said that Garzon had engaged in professional misconduct and violated constitutional guarantees when ordering the wiretapping of conversations between jailed corruption suspects and their lawyers.

The court also said the judge had violated the suspects' right to prepare their defence.

The wiretapping concerned suspects in the so-called Guertel affair, a corruption scandal involving dozens of entrepreneurs and regional and local politicians from Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative People's Party (PP).

Garzon's defence said he ordered the wiretapping to make sure the suspects' lawyers would not help them launder criminal money.

The verdict was seen as a death blow to the decades-long career of the 56-year-old judge - who is internationally known for his attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, and opened new judicial ground with his investigations into alleged human rights abuses ranging from Latin America to Guantanamo.

Thursday's sentence had no official connection with another trial, which deals with Garzon's attempt to launch Spain's first judicial inquiry into the crimes of Francisco Franco's 1939-75 dictatorship.

Garzon's supporters see the two trials as being linked and feel the judge has been subjected to a witch-hunt.