Spain to limit judges' probes into cross-border human rights abuses

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.