The Spanish Government’s law reforms designed to limit Spanish judges acting in an international capacity have backfired.

The Minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, gutted the capacity of Spanish judges to act according to International Law, mainly because of the international embarrassment of processing the ex-Chinese leader over the Tibet massacres.

Judge Baltazar Garzón, known as the Spanish judge that took Chilean dictator, General Pinochet, to task (thwarted by British Foreign Minister at the time, Jack Straw) was one of many Spanish judges that lead the way with the International Law Code in their hands.

But this international capacity also allowed Spanish judges to capture drug runners and pirates on the high seas and process them, despite their being outside normal Spanish national jurisdiction.

The Gallardón law reforms made it only possible to try suspects if a Spaniard was involved as a victim or if the crime had been carried out on Spanish soil, yet these very restrictions mean that drug runners and pirates are being set free in droves by Spanish judges – an unforeseen and embarrassing development for this already controversial Minister of Justice.

Despite 36 such suspects having been caught red-handed and now released, the Minister has refused to rectify the new law with the result that each week we hear of more.

Editorial comments: this judicial reform, brought into being with every other political party opposing it, together with the entire Spanish judicial body from top judges down, is a tremendous botch job, brought into to being solely to save the Government embarrassment and to curtail the power of disobedient judges.

Whilst there was a need to limit this judicial capacity, as this China affair demonstrated, the Government used the excuse to completely emasculate the existing law for purely ideological objectives; hence everybody imposing the changes in their present form.

(News: Spain)