The Spanish parliament called on the government on Tuesday to limit judges’ powers to prosecute people for atrocities and human rights crimes committed abroad under the concept of universal jurisdiction.
In a nonbinding proposal, deputies called for the government to urgently reform a law so that judges may only probe such cases if they involve Spanish victims or if the alleged offenders are found to be in Spain.
Spanish judges have used the doctrine of universal jurisdiction in recent years to try to seek prosecution in cases ranging from crimes allegedly committed by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to atrocities in Tibet and Rwanda.
But calls to limit the law’s interpretation increased when magistrates recently announced probes involving Israel and the US.
Many of the cases had little or no connection with Spain and critics accused the judges of interpreting the concept too loosely.
“We can’t turn ourselves into the world’s judicial police,” Supreme Court President Carlos Divar said recently.
After complaints from Israel, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos also said the government planned to limit the scope of such cases.
It was not immediately known when the government might set about reforming the bill.
Tuesday’s proposal also called for Spain to halt probes should there be investigations in the country involved.
The resolution, proposed by the leading opposition Popular Party, was backed by 339 deputies in the 350-seat chamber.
Most recently, National Court judges had begun studying probes of seven current or former Israeli officials over a 2002 air force bombing in Gaza and the alleged torture of terror suspects at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay.
In practice, Spain’s universal justice policy has had little effect, with extraditions extremely rare and only one conviction: an Argentine man named Adolfo Scilingo in 2005, over offenses during his country’s military-era “dirty war” against leftist dissidents.
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