Pinochet judge to investigate Spanish disappearances

The Spanish judge who tried to prosecute the late Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet has now set his sights on thousands of “disappeared” Spaniards.

Judge Baltasar Garzon (image) said that he will look into those who vanished during the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship of Francisco Franco. In doing so, Garzon has ordered that nineteen mass graves be opened including one that supposedly has the remains of famed poet Federico Garcia Lorca.

Garzon’s ruling is expected to face opposition from conservatives as well as some prosecutors. Nevertheless, the judge suspects that the Franco regime systematically tortured and killed leftist opponents:

The Franco regime, Judge Garzón wrote, “used all its resources to locate, identify and grant reparations to the victims from the winning side but did not give the same respect to the losers, who were persecuted, jailed, disappeared and tortured.” The disappearances, he concluded, constitute “crimes against humanity.”

Image- BBC News (“Judge Garzon is famous for crimes-against-humanity cases”.)
Sources- The Latin Americanist, IPS, AFP, New York Times, Times Online, Voice of America