Spain rights judge Garzon fights conviction

Spain's renowned rights judge Baltasar Garzon Thursday vowed a legal fight against his conviction for ordering wiretaps in a corruption probe, blasted by his supporters as a political stitch-up. Spain's Supreme Court suspended him from the judiciary for 11 years, crushing the career of a man who won renown for championing human rights cases, most famously by trying to extradite Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet. "I reject the sentence head-on," Garzon said in a statement. "My rights have been systematically violated." "I will turn to the appropriate legal channels to fight this sentence and carry out all pertinent actions to try to mitigate the irreparable harm that the authors of this sentence have inflicted." The conviction halted the rise of a judge who has taken on dictators, Basque militants and even Al-Qaeda, but who stumbled when he tangled with a corruption probe targeting senior Spanish politicians. In Thursday's judgment Garzon, 56, was found guilty of ordering illegal recordings of corruption suspects talking to their lawyers. His lawyer Francisco Baena told AFP he may appeal to Spain's Constitutional Court and, failing that, the European Court of Human Rights. The complex corruption case that Garzon probed has implicated senior members of the conservative Popular Party, which returned to government in December. Garzon argued in his trial that the wiretaps were legal since he wanted to prevent alleged money-laundering continuing while the suspects were in jail. "This sentence... eliminates all possibility of investigating corruption and related crimes," his statement said. Ordinary Spaniards expressed suspicion over the conviction. "He is the best judge Spain has had," said Emilio Garrido, 87, a passer-by in a Madrid street, after Thursday's ruling. "Now he has opposed the government that we have... this is what he gets." "The judicial system is bad in Spain," said another, Begona Antonio, 55. "There are the remains of Francoism. "It is a shame and makes me very sad." About 500-600 protesters rallied in Garzon's support in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square on Thursday evening, chanting "Shame", and "Garzon, friend, the people are with you!" Garzon is awaiting judgment in a second, more prominent trial for trying to investigate atrocities of the Franco era, in an alleged breach of an amnesty. He says the acts were crimes against humanity and not subject to an amnesty. His defenders say both trials, as well a third case of alleged bribe-taking, are revenge by his enemies. "The circumstances in which this conviction has been made cannot avoid being seen internationally as a punishment for Judge Garzon for investigating the crimes of the Francoists," said Pedro Nikken, president of the International Commission of Jurists, who observed the second trial. Reactions were muted on the side of the Popular Party. Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon said the government had "the utmost respect for the decisions taken by the magistrates in this case". The head of the Madrid regional government, Esperanza Aguirre of the Popular Party, went further. "It is a happy day for Spain and democracy," she said. "Because the ends, and I have no doubt that Garzon's ends were praiseworthy, the ends cannot justify the means and that is the basis of the rule of law." Among his accomplishments as a National Court judge, Garzon waged a judicial fight against Basque separatist group ETA and probed the GAL death squads launched against ETA suspects under the Socialist government of the 1980s. He also pursued members of the former dictatorship in Argentina and issued an indictment against Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in 2003. "I have worked against terrorism, drug-trafficking, crimes against humanity and corruption," he said in his statement Thursday. "I have always rigorously respected the rules."