Person of the week

Baltazar Garzon, a crusading Spanish judge who once attempted to extradite the Chilean leader General Pinochet from Britain under Spain's “universal jurisdiction” doctrine, was unanimously found guilty by the Spanish Supreme Court of a wiretapping offence and suspended from the legal courts for eleven years. He faces judgement in two more cases, one of which concerns his alleged violation of the amnesty that covers crimes committed during the Civil War -- a charge that his Spanish and international supporters believe is the real reason for the accumulation of prosecutions against him. There is no appeal from the Supreme Court judgement but Judge Garzon may take his case to the Spanish Constitutional Court or the European Court of Human Rights.