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Controversy rages in Spain over end of probe into Franco's crimes - Nov 19, 2008 - Madrid - Controversy was raging in Spain on Wednesday over a prominent judge's decision to drop the country's first judicial investigation into alleged human rights crimes during the 1936-39 civil war and General Francisco Franco's subsequent 36-year dictatorship. Representatives of Franco's victims claimed that judge Baltasar Garzon had acted under pressure, while conservative commentators said he did not have jurisdiction over Franco's crimes. National Court magistrate Garzon announced Tuesday he would not continue investigating Franco's crimes, because the dictator and others potentially responsible for the abuses were no longer alive.

The conservative daily El Mundo accused the judge of having broken legal norms in what it described as his search for notoriety. Garzon became internationally known when seeking the extradition of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998. He has also investigated human rights violations in other Latin American countries and Africa. Conservative analysts accuse the leftist judge of only handling high-profile cases, and ridiculed him for requesting Franco's death certificate, given that all of Spain knew the dictator to have died in 1975. Garzon's probe into Franco's crimes was opposed by the public prosecutor's office and some judges at his own court. The prosecutors appealed against the inquiry, questioning Garzon's stance that Franco's abuses constituted crimes against humanity, and arguing that they had been covered by an amnesty granted to the dictator's collaborators in 1977.