Posted on 03/26/2009 8:42:11 PM PDT by Scanian
For generations in Western culture, legal jurisdiction over people and events within a nation's borders rested only with that nation's government. In recent years, however, human rights activists have pushed the concept of "universal jurisdiction," by which judges in one country can assert authority to prosecute any offense regardless of where it took place.
The zealots have found their champion in one Baltasar Garzon, a judge on the Spanish National Court. A socialist activist as a college student, Garzon at age 32 became the youngest magistrate on the court. Now 53, he has spent many of the intervening years practicing what can only be called judicial megalomania.
Thriving on publicity, Judge Garzon has, at various times, gone after former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the late former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet, 98 former Argentine military members (despite an amnesty enacted after the end of that country's "dirty war"). In 2003 he even indicted Osama bin Laden and 34 other alleged terrorists, a few of whom were in Spanish custody. He charged them with being members of a terrorist gang and for being involved in the 9/11 attacks, rather than any terrorist acts in Spain. The proper jurisdiction for anything involving 9/11 would have been the United States. As desirable as it would have been to capture and try bin Laden, only 18 of the defendants were convicted of having terrorist links and none with 9/11.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Oh goody. How long before he convicts bush of war crimes en absentia?
If there is “universal jurisdiction”, then national sovereignty is a myth, because nations have no rights over their own nationals. Any nation can indict the citizens of another nation and demand that they appear in a foreign court.
(And Americans appearing before a foreign court would not
have any of the rights they are guaranteed by our Constitution; they would have to defend themselves according to whatever rights are afforded defendants in the country charging them.)
Where is Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?
Waiting for this nut to go after the communists for their war crimes against Franco’s troops and supporters, as well as their executing their own International Brigade members who tried to leave.
One reported executioner was Tony DeMaio, of the US Abraham Lincoln Brigade. His brother was Soviet operative Ernest DeMaio of the International Electrical Workers Union (UE).
oh sooo solly!
You must make do with obama.
Baltasar Garzon may be guilty of felony animal cruelty (attendance at an animal fight, specifically a bullfight) under the laws of Pennsylvania and numerous other states; only in two states is it not illegal to be a spectator at an animal fight. A couple of online articles say that he is a bullfighting fan.
The fact that the bullfights in question did not take place in the United States is irrelevant according to Senor Garzon’s own reasoning. I think we should file charges against him and seek his extradition.
Garzon’s defense attorney might seek to argue that a bullfight is not a fight between two animals but between an animal and men (I use the latter term very loosely for Spanish cowards sin cojones who torture an animal from a relatively safe distance), but the picadors’ horses are unwilling parties to the “fight,” and they run a risk of injury. Let’s get Interpol to arrest the bugger and drag him into a U.S. court!
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