Miguel Angel de la Cruz, a veteran reporter for TV station Antena 3, has covered the National Court and Garzon for 15 years and wrote a book about him. He says Garzon is indeed a dogged, fearless judge who has done many good things. "The guy is a great judge," he said. "He's dared to take on everybody."
But in his zeal Garzon sometimes stumbles, and many of his cases have failed to hold up in court, de la Cruz said.
Carlos Taibo, a political science professor at Complutense University in Madrid, agrees. "He goes too fast," Taibo said. "The image that many jurists have of Garzon is that he is not very rigorous in the strictly legal sense."
They point to Garzon's recent choice of date for jailing an Islamic terror suspect, Al-Jazeera reporter Tayssir Alouni: the second anniversary of Sept. 11.
"Couldn't he have done it August 22? No," de la Cruz said. "He had to do it on a key date so he'd get his picture in the paper."
Among Garzon's defenders is Joan Garces, a human rights lawyer who was an aide to Salvador Allende, the president whom Pinochet ousted, and who was involved in Garzon's case against the general.
He says that since Garzon has had al-Qaeda members in jail here since November 2001 and now indicted them, it makes sense to charge their leader as well.
"Speaking strictly in terms of legal logic, it is perfectly defensible," Garces said. And if some Sept. 11 planning took place in Spain, as Garzon asserts, he would have no choice but to go after bin Laden even if other countries want him, too, Garces said.
And if Garzon seems to be everywhere at once it is simply because he's committed, not obsessed with fame, Garces said. "Not all judges have the same capacity for work," he said. "Some are driven to investigate and some are simply bureaucrats who get paid and don't worry about things too much."
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