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Spanish Superjudge To Represent Assange
First time accepted submitter ccguy writes "Spanish ex-judge Balsazar Garzón will represent wikileak's Julian Assange in his extradiction case. In the past 30 years Garzón has led the most important investigations in Spain: Against drug cartels, against terrorist groups (ETA), and against corruption. He's also famous for his attempt to extradite Chilean dictator Pinochet to Spain to judge him for crimes against humanity. In his last investigation Garzón ordered in-prison conversations between corrupt politicians and their lawyers to be monitored. This is legal in Spain if the goal is to prevent further crimes to be committed (such as the inmate telling his lawyer to destroy evidence, or offshore funds). This caused Garzón to be disbarred as a judge. The president of the Supreme Court that signed this disbarment (Carlos Dívar) was later on made to resign, after it was discovered that he used taxpayers' money for deluxe vacations."
Since he was removed from his judgeship, he'd be an ex-super-judge, no? Or perhaps a super-ex-judge?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Will our Talented Framed Swedish Honey-trap Victim and Hero escape? Tune into the next episode of Assange ...
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Superjudge
Superman
You be the... "judge".
He is banned from practicing law in Spain but can still practice anywhere else in Europe. The reason he was unseated in Spain was for issuing illegal wiretaps on member of the government that were suspected of corruption. Kind of like if you pointed out some serious flaws in your supervisor's business plan and were then fired for it.
I got here through a series of tubes
Spain claims worldwide jurisdiction over certain crimes, though I think they only try to enforce it in the Spanish-speaking portion of the world. The War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague claims worldwide jurisdiction over certain crimes as well.
Both are fine with me, as long as they use legal means to attempt extradition, and stick to prosecuting mass murderer, genocide, etc., against people who would never be tried in their home countries. Some morality has to be global, and any reasonable person can differentiate between basic, fundamental morality and things that reasonably vary from culture to culture. Slippery-slope arguments to the contrary are fallacious.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
illegal wiretaps, though?
he should apply for US citizenship!
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Well, the wikipedia article on him makes it sound a lot more complicated than that, in that "Under Spanish law, such wiretaps are only expressly permitted for terrorism cases and the legality of their use in other cases is more vague". There were a number of other charges too.
From the sound of it, he was a very popular judge among the left because he went hard after members of the former Franco government for crimes against humanity. But he sounds like he at the very least "bent the rules" to do so, and the right in Spain was more than willing to take him down for it.
"... Sean Hannity, whose surgery to remove those bolts from his neck was apparently successful,
He is banned from practicing law in Spain
He isn't banned from practicing law. He's banning for the judicial career, but he has a law degree (obviously) and he can work as a lawyer.
Keep in mind that this guy has worked with lots of international agencies, and apparently he's found the people with the largest balls in each. Otherwise Pinochet wouldn't have spent almost a year in London, for example.
The reason he was unseated in Spain was for issuing illegal wiretaps on member of the government that were suspected of corruption.
Suspected as in jail no less. He ordered a wiretapping indeed, and everyone else in the process agreed, to make sure that the people in jail wouldn't use their lawyers to continue to commit crimes. In fact, the tapes proved that they were doing so.
To be honest the reason I submitted the story (one date late indeed, but I expected an Assange story to appear rather quickly) is to bring a bit of awareness on Garzon's story as well as the blatant corruption going on over here (Spain).
We really owe a lot to this guy, even if the end it seems like the bad guys are getting their way.
Assange is accused of rape and espionage. Pinochet was accused and convicted of ordering the torture of over 40,000 people and murder of over 3000 (not even counting his violent overthrow of a democratically elected government). Assange's crimes, whatever they may be, are in no way equivalent to Pinochet's crimes against humanity.
I am officially gone from
I see no duplicity in what he's doing:
* Pinochet was bad for humanity.
* The people trying to extradite Julian Assange are bad for humanity.
In both those cases he's fighting against the bad people.
No sig today...
Assange is accused of rape and espionage.
First, Assange is certainly not being extradited, accused of espionage nowhere in Sweden or in the UK... obviously. That is just some USA wet dream.
Second, the only dumb enough people to use the term "rape" for what he did, are the Swedish. He had sex, by mutual consent with a woman, and she found out the condom broke. Assage claims he didn't know (may be true or not, but it happened to me before and I can tell you, it's not very easy to know the exact conditions of a condom around your penis when you are inside a woman), strange enough she continued having intimate relations with Assage for some time after that, as did the other "victim" clamming the same. It was only when the two lucky girls found out we was not faithful to them, that they decided to press charges... talk about a moral high ground here.
It is incredible that even after almost 40 years, the judicial system in Spain still looks pretty much the same as in Franco's time. By the way things are going, every mobster should get a law degree. This way they can argue that every conversation they have should be protected by attorney/client privilege. As I understand the case, that's how they got rid of Garzón.
"Can we stop pretending that what he is accused of isn't rape"
That's a bit of an insult to all the women who have definitely been raped, beaten, and dumped in an alleyway. And didn't throw parties next day to celebrate. Or tweet about how cool their rapist was. And certainly didn't get international police hunts organized to find/extradite their rapists.
The last thing I read, Julian Assange was accused of "Surprise Sex", punishable by a 750 Euro fine. Maybe the girl's stories have got more elaborate since then. Why wouldn't they? With no evidence it's just his word against theirs.
No sig today...
It isn't all that much of a stretch from Pinochet to Kim Dotcom
Let's see: one is accused of copyrights infringement, the other of murdering thousands.
Yeah, not much of a stretch.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
(i am a spaniard) Sorry for assange he better get more lawyers or at least ones with better work history. Garzon directly asked for money to the owner of the bank he was judging for his conferences in the US (http://diariorc.com/?p=6950)
This isn't true and has been disproven already.
Garzon is accused by one spanish counter terrorist (whichever trust this might have) of hiding the real person in charge of spanish inmoral and illegal war against terrorism
Uh? If you are referring to GAL, anyone who can prove anything can go to another judge. Saying that this particular judge, who discovered *the whole thing* decided to keep the GAL boss hidden is absurd.
, by this time he became for some time a politician affiliated to the political party who was accused of supporting this death squadron.
Get your facts straight. He was brought on board by PSOE to fight corruption, he wasn't allowed to apparently and he left quite quickly and went back to his judicial career. of course when he did this he became the enemy of many in PSOE (left wing party in Spain for those who don't know). He already had lots of enemies in PP (right wing party).
Garzon was accused of not investigating a possible crime commited by the army and police minister or someone close of aborting a terrorist raid agains them ....mmmm many things to make me wonder if this is the only lawyer assange should have.
Link?
What evidence do you have to support your rather strange claims about Scandinavian law? Your claims are not in line with books or scholars on the subject. What are your credentials?
As a Scandinavian lawyer I have to disagree with your frankly unfounded claims on the basis of our legal history. Our law is built on the foundations of both Roman (Code Civil) and German (BGB) law. If that's not solid and strong then nothing is! Most countries in the world have similar foundations - with the exception of the former British colonies and some Muslim countries (mixed).
In modern times our laws have absolutely been constantly maintained and expanded with new laws from both national, regional and European sources. You do realize all the Scandinavian countries are subject to both the Council of Europe and EU law (either directly or indirectly)? According to most ratings, reviews and analysis human rights are better protected in Scandinavia than in the UK or US.
You are either ignorant or lying when you claim that Sweden or any other Scandinavian country would extradite a person to the US more easily. The US has been denied their own citizens on the basis that even US prisons are not satisfactory in terms of human rights according to our courts! The threat of the death penalty means a whole lot more to civilized countries where it's already illegal. It's also illegal under our laws to extradite if there's even the slightest chance that he could receive capital punishment! I can refer you to countless cases and verdicts.