Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon does not concern himself with international boundaries. He has indicted Osama bin Laden, issued an arrest warrant for Augusto Pinochet, and now he's set his sights on the U.S. operation at Guantanamo Bay.
GUY RAZ, host: In Spain, there's a judge who, for more than a decade, has been chasing drug lords and dictators, terrorists and corrupt politicians from across the globe. His name: Baltasar Garzon.</s>GUY RAZ, host: Eleven years ago, his arrest warrant for the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet set an international precedent. Now, Garzon has set his sights on former members of the Bush administration. Jerome Socolovsky has a report from Madrid.</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: Critics say Baltasar Garzon craves the spotlight, so it may be a bit of a surprise that he can come across as bland and circumspect, as in this television appearance. Sitting on a verandah overlooking the dry Andalusian countryside where he grew up, he talks about justice and accountability in rather bureaucratic terms.</s>Judge BALTASAR GARZON: (Through translator) The important thing is to establish a system so that fear cannot be generated officially. What's really bad is the form of behavior where fear is generated from official levels by creating an alarm that is not justified.</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: In other words, it's criminal to violate human rights by exaggerating national security threats. There's no doubt Garzon has pushed the envelope of international justice. Aside from his arrest warrant for Pinochet, he has indicted Osama bin Laden and investigated Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for tax evasion. Gonzalo Boye is a Chilean human rights lawyer based in Madrid.</s>Mr. GONZALO BOYE (Human Rights Attorney): I think the most important thing is that he is so well-known for being tough in these matters that people, when they know that Judge Garzon is behind the case or in charge of the case, they really became scared.</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: A few months ago, Boye asked Garzon to press charges against former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other Bush administration lawyers. Boye's argument: They gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo.</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: After President Obama said he opposed the investigation, Spain's attorney general got it reassigned to another judge. Garzon responded by opening a new and broader investigation of torture at U.S.-run prisons around the world. Boye says it was a masterful stroke.</s>Mr. GONZALO BOYE (Human Rights Attorney): So at the end, Judge Garzon is going to investigate the whole case of Guantanamo.</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: In Spain, an investigating magistrate is somewhere between a prosecutor and a judge in the U.S. legal system. He leads investigations and orders arrests but does not preside over trials. Garzon established his reputation in the 1990s.</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: Basque militants were assassinating judges and other public figures, and Garzon jailed quite a few members of the separatist group ETA, but he also went after quasi-official death squads in a stunning case that led to the imprisonment of the Spanish interior minister. Even his critics praise him for those accomplishments. Gustavo de Aristegui is a member of the Spanish parliament.</s>Mr. GUSTAVO de ARISTEGUI (Member of Parliament, Spain): Baltasar Garzon has served his country very well on many, many serious investigations that he has been responsible of, but we must ask ourselves if lately, the very fact that he has been so overexposed in the press for these last 15, 20 years, is this not all part of an attempt to become even more popular and notorious?</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: But Aristegui's own popular party is now in Garzon's sights in a corruption investigation.</s>Mr. GUSTAVO de ARISTEGUI (Member of Parliament, Spain): The man is not neutral in some of his judgments and in some of his investigations and has sometimes used his position as a means for personal revenge.</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: Conchita Martin(ph) is the widow of Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Blanco, who was killed in an ETA car bombing in 2000. At a cafe in Madrid, she says she used to have more faith in the judge.</s>Ms. CONCHITA MARTIN: (Speaking foreign language).</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: Garzon began as an extraordinary judge, she says. He was a man that everyone trusted, and he was the true scourge of ETA. Now, she adds, he seeks fame and doesn't care so much about the victims.</s>JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: But Garzon's defenders say his taste for celebrity doesn't get in the way of a relentless pursuit of justice both in Spain and abroad. For NPR News, I'm Jerome Socolovsky in Madrid.