“Our four weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to…Justice?” Cardinal Ximénez, put aside the [dish-drying] rack and the Comfy Chair. Torture should be thrown into the ash heap of history. Spanish Inquisitors have devised a more clever means to punish the errant: universal jurisdiction.

With apologies to Monty Python, and with no intention of being too flip with a grave topic, I was struck when I heard this story on NPR’s Morning Edition on the drive to work. To quote,

Spain’s National Court operates under the principle of universal jurisdiction. As a result of a 2005 ruling by the Constitutional Court, the National Court must investigate allegations of crimes like torture and terrorism in another country if no legal action is being taken there.

Now, the court’s docket contains more than a dozen cases in countries including China, Morocco, Israel and the United States.

Thus, in March of this year, a Spanish magistrate on the National Court, Judge Baltasar Garzon “started an investigation into allegations that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other Bush administration lawyers gave legal justification for torture at Guantanamo.” The BBC reports that “Mr. Garzon is one of six investigating judges for Spain’s National Court which, like many other European countries, operates an inquisitorial system, as opposed to the adversarial system used by the US and UK.  The investigating judge’s role is to examine the cases assigned to him by the court, gathering evidence and evaluating whether the case should be brought to trial. He does not try the cases himself.”