Madrid - The Spanish Parliament on Thursday approved draft
legislation limiting the authority of judges to investigate human
rights violations in other countries.
The law was approved with a large majority, including Prime
Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's socialists and the opposition
conservatives.
The National Court had earlier been accused of taking on too many
cross-border human rights cases.
The court started its human rights crusade after judge Baltasar
Garzon made a ground-breaking attempt to obtain the extradition of
former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from London in 1998.
The court is currently investigating more than a dozen cases of
alleged human rights abuses in other countries, ranging from Latin
America to Africa and the US prison camp of Guantanamo in Cuba.
Some of the recent cases have threatened to cause diplomatic
conflicts, such as a probe into alleged Chinese repression in Tibet
and into Israeli's 2002 bombing in Gaza Strip.
In 2005, the Constitutional Court said Spanish courts had
jurisdiction over human rights violations even when they did not
involve Spanish citizens, but the new law will partly reverse that
ruling.
The law, which still needs to be approved by the Senate, requires
that investigations into genocide, crimes against humanity, terrorism
or piracy must involve Spanish citizens or suspects who are in Spain.
Courts cannot investigate alleged human rights crimes which are
being 'effectively' dealt with by the countries where they were
committed, or by an international tribunal.
The socialists and conservatives said the reform would put Spanish
legislation in line with other European countries.
But several smaller leftist or regionalist parties criticized the
reform, describing it as a big blow to human rights.
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