The Garzón case & International Law
Deirdre Montgomery at the International Criminal Law Bureau writes:
The crux of the case is whether the amnesty law can be limited or superseded by crimes against humanity. It will be interesting to see how much weight international case law (notably the Special Court of Sierra Leone decision to prosecute indicted suspects who had been granted amnesty) is given by the Spanish supreme court in such a politically charged decision. […] According to British human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC: “His [Garzón’s] ruling that there can be no posthumous impunity for crimes against humanity is important to all descendants of the victims of such crimes worldwide, whether they be from the Armenian genocide or the Nazi holocaust. As a matter of international criminal law he was undoubtedly right.”
More here.
