When courtesy smacks of complicity

It is part of an embassy's responsibilities to concern itself with judicial proceedings affecting the government or citizens of its country, and to take pertinent action so that the outcome will be favorable, or less harmful, to its interests. But in matters that are before the courts it is important to respect institutional formalities: these actions cannot be carried out directly upon the jurisdictional bodies, thus becoming acts of pressure on judicial independence. It is a question not just of good diplomatic manners, but of respect for the rules of a democratic state, whether this be Spain or the United States, or any other country that calls itself democratic.

There is nothing to object to if the US Embassy in Madrid expresses, to the Spanish foreign and justice ministers, its interest in the cases of the Spanish television cameraman José Couso, killed by a projectile fired from an American tank in the Iraq war; of the CIA rendition flights that made stopovers in Spanish airports; and of incidences of torture in Guantánamo - as appears in the reports revealed by EL PAÍS from the Wikileaks cables.

But what these reports also reveal is that the US embassy had a disquieting influence on the Spanish government, and infringed on the judicial arena, which is unacceptable. What is even more alarming is the behavior of those to whom the diplomatic attentions were addressed: they accepted the entreaties not only as a matter of routine but with complacency, to the point of acting as collaborators and privileged informers for one of the parties in the proceedings, to the detriment of the rights of the others.

In the Couso case, the diligence with which the chief prosecutor of the National High Court, Javier Zaragoza, informed the embassy's legal counsel of his opposition to an indictment of the US soldiers accused of the death of the Spanish photographer, raises doubts about his impartiality in the case. Nor was his impartiality very conspicuous when he received two senior embassy officials in his office to explain to them his procedural strategy contrary to Judge Garzon's investigation into the torture of a prisoner of Spanish nationality in Guantánamo. Or when he passed on previous information supplied by another High Court prosecutor concerning his position in the inquiry into the CIA's rendition flights.

Spain's attorney general, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, places these meetings in the context of relations of courtesy and cooperation between American and Spanish prosecutors. But the complicity revealed by the nature of these contacts casts dark shadows of doubt over this sugar-coated version.

And if we add the personal approaches made to judges of the National High Court to these contacts with prosecutors, the scenario that emerges in the reports is more than worrying. Particularly striking are the maneuvers made by the US Embassy, with the active collaboration of the chief prosecutor Zaragoza, to have Judge Garzón removed from the Guantánamo torture case, which coincided with the offensive launched against the judge in connection with his investigation into Franco-era crimes.