Garzón, Baltasar

   Spanish magistrate who initiated the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte for crimes against humanity. On 16 October 1988 Garzón instructed Interpol to place Pinochet Ugarte under armed guard at the private clinic in London where the general was recuperating from back surgery. Pinochet Ugarte’s name appeared often in the jurist’s investigation of the torture and murder of Spanish nationals in Chile. Among the more high-profile victims named in the investigation was Carmelo Soria, a United Nations employee and Spanish citizen. Garzón’s case would be further supported with evidence from the files of Juan Garcés, an author and a former Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) official. Like Garzón, Garcés had spent several years documenting the Pinochet Ugarte government’s abuse of Spanish citizens. Garzón’s indictment was welcomed by human-rights organizations and by victims of the Pinochet Ugarte regime. For more than a year, the British House of Lords debated whether to extradite Pinochet Ugarte to Spain to face formal charges. In the end, however, doctors declared Pinochet Ugarte medically unfit to stand trial, and he returned to Chile on 3 March 2000.

   Garzón exposed the international terror network centered in Chile and operating under the code name Operation Condor. He also investigated the murder and disappearance of hundreds of Spanish citizens during the repression in Argentina and sought the extradition of Argentine officers to Spain to face charges. In April 2005 a Spanish court sentenced Adolfo Scilingo in person to 640 years in prison, establishing a precedent by convicting a human-rights violator in person (not in absentia) outside the country where the violations took place.