Spanish AG: No torture probe of 'Bush 6'

RAW STORY Published: Thursday April 16, 2009
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Spanish prosecutors will recommend against opening an investigation into whether Bush administration officials sanctioned torture against terror suspects, that country's attorney general said Thursday.

Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido told reporters that the case was without merit because the officials were not present when the alleged torture took place and that a trial would turn Spain's National Court into "a plaything" for political ends.

The intention had been to target six officials whose advice and legal opinions cleared the way for the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, former vice presidential chief of staff David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes.

"If one is dealing with a crime of mistreatment of prisoners of war, the complaint should go against those who physically carried it out," Conde-Pumpido stated. "If there is a reason to file a complaint against these people, it should be done before local courts with jurisdiction, in other words in the United States."

Attorney Scott Horton, who reported on Monday that Spanish prosecutors had decided to press forward with the investigation, now explains that "the Spanish prosecutors report to the attorney general and he is entitled to review and modify their decisions much in the way that the U.S. attorney general supervises and directs the work of career federal prosecutors."

Horton goes on to say, "Interventions of this sort, however, are fairly unusual. 'The circumstances of the attorney general’s announcement suggest that political intervention at a very high level has occurred,' remarked one lawyer involved with the complaint. The attorney general’s intervention may well reflect the concern of the government of Prime Minister Jose Zapatero over relations with the new Obama administration."

Gonzalo Boyé, one of the four human rights lawyers who brought the case in Spain, said the decision by Conde-Pumpido was not only politically motivated but sets a terrible course for Spanish justice.

When provisional criminal proceedings began in late March, Boyé believed Spain's chief prosecutor would have little choice but to approve the prosecution. "The only route of escape the prosecutor might have is to ask whether there is ongoing process in the US against these people," he told the Observer. "This case will go ahead. It will be against the law not to go ahead."

Now Boyé is complaining bitterly about the recommendation to drop the case. "The attorney-general speaks of the court being turned into a plaything," he told the Associated Press. "Well, I don't think the attorney-general's office should be turned into a plaything for politicians. It is a terrible precedent if those intellectually responsible for crimes can no longer be held accountable."

Boyé also told CNN that the case could still go forward if Judge Baltasar Garzon decides to pursue it, and he noted that prosecutors had opposed Garzon's investigations of ex-Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. "It's up to the resolution of a court as it has always been," Boye stated. "Garzon has to decide. This is a jurisdiction decision for a judge, not for the prosecution."

However, a senior court official told AP that prosecutors will recommend that Garzon be replaced by a different judge who is already investigating whether secret CIA flights to Guantanamo entered Spanish airspace. This would be another serious blow to the hopes of human rights lawyers.

"It's a shame the prosecutor is taking this position, but not a surprise," Boyé observed. "They always obey political orders. They don't want to be in a bad position in front of the Obama administration."