The indictment of Garzón

In the action against Judge Garzón for the phone taps used against imprisoned suspects in the Gürtel case, it is hard to ignore the symbolism. Here we see a justice system that moves more diligently against a crime-busting judge, for supposedly exceeding his powers, than it does against the alleged criminals, who are placing obstacles in the way of the investigation and are being helped by elaborate defensive strategies, in all probability paid for with the money robbed from the public coffers and the taxpayer.

It does not seem to be by mere chance that this is the first trial of Garzón resulting from the three charges brought against him. The first in line should technically be that over his supposedly improper inquiry into the crimes of the Franco era, which has been pending trial for more than a year, and has been strangely frozen since that time. It's as if the Supreme Court is afraid of the worldwide repercussions it might produce, and preferred to put Garzón's on the stand for the first time for a less controversial matter.

The wiretap case is procedurally just as weak as that of the Franco crimes. It is does not, however, have the same dramatic background and implications: the manifest indifference to the victims of the Franco regime, and to their families who are fighting to retrieve their remains from the mass graves where they still lie.

Not long after his investigation of the Gürtel case began, Garzón detected signs that the lawyers of the ringleaders - Correa and Crespo - may have been serving as messengers to the outside, and ordered their phones tapped, under the terms of the Penitentiary Law and its express safeguard of the right of defense.

To take for granted - as the Supreme Court judge does in the initial indictment - that Garzón sought to violate the right of the defense to ensure the success of a media-charged investigation, is going too far. It constitutes a judgment of intentions inconsistent with the precautions expressed by Garzón in this regard - even if the same judge does not believe them, and labels them a "postscript" - and goes against everything that can be assumed in the conduct of an investigating judge. This conduct has been continued by Judge Pedreira, Garzón's successor in the Gürtel case, who endorsed the continuance of the taps; by the Court of Madrid judge who disagreed with their annulment and exclusion from the proceedings; and by the Prosecutor's Office, which has held, then and now, that Garzón's conduct did not violate the right of defense.

What a majority ruling of the High Court of Madrid has established is that the taps constituted an overstepping of procedural bounds, such as judges commit regularly and which are resolved in the course of proceedings. To call it misconduct is a big step indeed. This action against Garzón is as forced as the other two. Strange, then, how promptly it has been brought forward in the Supreme Court. Would it have been rejected out of hand, had the accused and the accusers not been who they are?