The Torture Memos Finally Catch Up With Mr Yoo

The New York Times today March 28, 2009, ran a story on the crusading Spanish judge Balthazar Garzon (accented on the "o"). (Garzon is the investigating judge who sucessfully prosecuted the nortorious Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator. The dust had died down when Pinochet, in the UK for medical treatment, was actually arrested and tried.) In: "Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on 6 Bush Era Officials"
See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/world/europe/29spain.html?em . "A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said."

Hooray for Judge Garzon! It seems very likely the case will go forward against these men including the notorious Mr. Yoo, Feith, Attorney General Gonzales and others less well known who made it possible for the President and Mr Cheney to abandon the rule of law. Most of these men including Mr Yoo who now sits happily in a professorship at a prestigious university will become international criminals subject to arrest if they leave the country.

The wheels of justice grind slowly....but exceedingly fine. The hope for Mr. Yoo and his kind to be seen escorted from their homes with trench coats over their heads (as they deserve) is probably not going to happen...but the fact that they will not have the freedom of travel and will be classified as international criminals will be sufficient to upset their lives and stand as a warning to other lawyers who would wish to circumvent our laws "Gonzalo Boye, the Madrid lawyer who filed the complaint, said that the six Americans cited had had well-documented roles in approving illegal interrogation techniques, redefining torture and abandoning the definition set by the 1984 Torture Convention........... Our profession does not allow us to misuse our legal knowledge to create a pseudo-legal frame to justify, stimulate and cover up torture.” said Boye.

The article supports the notion that Spain has the authority to prosecute the case and it records events here in the US, our recent successful prosecution for torture of a Liberian who committed the acts in Liberia which establish precedent for the Spanish prosecutions. I await the results and the squirming and denials of the inditees with great anticipation.