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A judge in Chile has issued arrest warrants for more than 100 former security officials. They are accused of the worst killings and other human rights violations during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archives in Washington, talks with Ari Shapiro about the crimes committed during the so-called “dirty war.”

Entre los encartados hay al menos 60 nuevos ex agentes que hasta ahora no habían caído en las redes de la justicia por delitos de lesa humanidad. Del total de procesados, todos en retiro, 50 son del Ejército y el resto de la FACh, Armada, Investigaciones y Carabineros.

El más masivo procesamiento en la historia de los juicios por violaciones de los derechos humanos, dictó ayer el juez Víctor Montiglio en contra de 120 ex agentes, todos de la DINA.

Entre los encausados hay cerca de 60 nuevos ex represores que hasta ahora no habían sido procesados en algún juicio por delitos de lesa humanidad cometidos durante la dictadura.

El magistrado resolvió los nuevos encartamientos por los crímenes cometidos en las llamadas operaciones Colombo, Cóndor y los episodios conocidos como Calle Conferencia I y II.

En estos dos últimos, en 1976, la DINA secuestró e hizo desaparecer a dos direcciones clandestinas completas del entonces encubierto Partido Comunista.

Aunque el juez Montiglio mantuvo la información lejos de la prensa, se conoció que de los 120 procesados, hay al menos 50 que pertenecen al Ejército y el resto a la Fuerza Aérea, Armada, Investigaciones y Carabineros.

Entre los oficiales procesados y ya retirados del Ejército que cumplieron misiones operativas en la DINA, al menos están César Manríquez Bravo, Manuel Carevic Cubillos, Hernán Sovino Novoa, Humberto Chaigneau Sepúlveda y Sergio Castillo González.

Este último es uno de los ex agentes represores que continúan recibiendo un sueldo mensual del Ejército, recontratado como empleado civil, según el reportaje “La DINA a honorarios” publicado en la última edición de La Nación Domingo.

Esta vez el ministro Montiglio incluyó entre los procesados a varios ex agentes que montaron guardia en los recintos clandestinos de detención, pero que también fueron agentes operativos en el traslado de prisioneros para su exterminio y desaparición.

Incluso, no pocos de ellos integraron las brigadas operativas de la DINA deteniendo opositores y participando en las torturas o en golpizas.

El juez Montiglio explicó ayer este masivo encausamiento, manifestando que ello se debe a que “aquí estamos investigando a todos quienes han tenido participación en los cuarteles (de la DINA)”.

El magistrado ordenó además el arresto preventivo de una gran parte de los procesados, y aquellos respecto de los cuales no lo decretó, se explica porque ya se encuentran encausados por otros casos y en situación de libertad provisional, esperando condena.

La Operación Cóndor, o Plan Cóndor, fue una coordinación de los servicios de inteligencia del cono sur para reprimir y eliminar a militantes de izquierda, y nació en Santiago el 28 de noviembre de 1975.

A esa reunión, en la que se formó el acta de constitución, asistieron por Chile el jefe de la DINA, coronel Manuel Contreras; por Argentina el capitán de navío Jorge Casas; por Bolivia el mayor de Ejército Carlos Mena; por Uruguay el coronel de Ejército Jorge A. Pons, y por Paraguay el coronel de Ejército Benito Güanes Serrano.

La Operación Colombo fue un montaje preparado por la dictadura entre fines de 1974 y 1975, para hacer creer a la sociedad chilena y los países extranjeros que ya reclamaban por la represión tras el golpe militar de 1973, que los detenidos desaparecidos eran una mentira del “marxismo internacional”.

Para ello, inventaron que 119 chilenos que se reclamaban como desaparecidos, habían muerto en Argentina y Brasil, enfrentados entre ellos por rencillas políticas o en intercambio de disparos con las policías o fuerzas militares de esos países.

EL CASO CONFERENCIA

Se conoció como Calle Conferencia, según el nombre de la calle de Santiago con el número 1587 donde se produjeron las primeras detenciones, al episodio por el cual la DINA secuestró e hizo desaparecer en mayo de 1976 a la primera dirección clandestina del Partido Comunista.

Entre ellos cayeron Víctor Díaz López, secretario general del PC en la clandestinidad, además de Jorge Muñoz Poutays, Mario Zamorano Donoso, Uldarico Donaire Cortez, y Jaime Donato Avendaño.

El capítulo conocido como Conferencia II se le llama también “El caso de los 13″, por el secuestro y desaparición de 11 integrantes de la segunda dirección clandestina del PC junto a dos militantes del MIR, ocurrido entre el 29 de noviembre y el 20 de diciembre de 1976.

La investigación judicial estableció que tanto los miembros de la primera, como la segunda dirección del PC, fueron detenidos por integrantes de la Brigada Lautaro de la DINA, comandada por el capitán de Ejército Juan Morales Salgado, y por los integrantes de dos grupos operativos liderados por Ricardo Lawrence y Germán Barriga, capitán de Carabineros y Ejército, respectivamente.

Santiago Araya Cabrera (MIR) fue detenido el 29 de noviembre de 1976. El 13 de diciembre fue arrestado el dirigente PC Luis Lazo San Martín.

Dos días más tarde fueron secuestrados Horacio Cepeda Marinkovich, Lincoyán Yalú Berríos, Fernando Navarro Allendes, Fernando Ortiz Letelier, Héctor Véliz Ramírez, Reinalda Pereira Plaza y Waldo Pizarro Molina.

El 9 de diciembre fue detenido Armando Portilla, finalizando la operación el 18 de diciembre con Lisandro Cruz Díaz y Carlos Durán González (MIR), y el 20 de ese mes, con el secuestro de Edras Pinto Arroyo.

Sólo en 2007 se conoció judicialmente el infierno que vivieron los detenidos, porque ningún prisionero salió con vida desde el cuartel Simón Bolívar de la Brigada Lautaro.

Respecto del destino de los dirigentes, el testimonio del suboficial de Carabineros (R) Raúl Valdebenito Araya fue decisivo para abrir la causa.

Según él, por esos días, “tres o cuatro” detenidos, todos miembros del PC, fueron llevados hasta el gimnasio del cuartel, para ser interrogados.

No recuerda si fue ese día o al siguiente que vio a las personas “ya ensacadas”, aludiendo a que habían sido eliminadas y puestas dentro de sacos paperos.

El mismo Valdebenito se encargó de conducir a la comitiva de automóviles hasta la cuesta Barriga, al poniente Santiago.

“Al llegar nos detuvimos y recuerdo que los vehículos que venían custodiándonos sacaron de sus maleteras unos tres o cuatro bultos, los que fueron trasladados hasta el interior de una cueva”, declaró en el sumario.

Según recuerda, “pocos días después”, llegaron cinco detenidos más al cuartel Simón Bolívar, también miembros de la dirección del PC, quienes habían sido detenidos por los equipos operativos de Lawrence y Barriga.

Otro agente entregó antecedentes trascendentales para probar la estadía en ese cuartel del profesor Fernando Ortiz, Reinalda Pereira y Lincoyán Berríos.

A Chilean judge ordered today the arrest and indictment of more than 120 former intelligence agents from the Pinochet dictatorship under charges of crimes against humanity in three major operations that took place in the 1970s.

Judge Victor Montiglio’s decision marked the first massive indictment for human rights crimes here since the courts began serious efforts in 2000 to investigate human rights violations during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

The crimes include the disappearance of the entire Communist party leadership in 1976, in a case known as “calle Conferencia,” in reference to the street where they were abducted, and an operation known as “Colombo,” in which 119 opponents were made to disappear in 1975. This was a scandalous case — the regime, with the cooperation of its counterparts in Argentina and Brazil, mounted a cover-up operation by fabricating newspapers in those countries listing the names of the victims as having been killed in political infighting within their own organizations.

The indictments also include those responsible for crimes in “Operation Condor,” a network of intelligence services in the Southern Cone set up in the mid-70s at the behest of the Chilean agency National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) to collaborate in the exchange of information and prisoners in member countries. The Chilean partner in Condor, DINA, took this cooperation one step forward by carrying out assassinations abroad, such as the car bomb murder of Orlando Letelier and his U.S. colleague Ronni Moffit in Washington, D.C. in 1976, among others.

Over half of the agents indicted today had never been indicted or arrested for other human rights crimes previously. Montiglio is indicting everyone involved in these events, from those who transported prisoners or were guards in clandestine detention centers, to those directly responsible for their death and disappearance.

They include retired army officers, dozens of non-commissioned army officers, and  members of the Air Force and Carabineros police.

By Pascale Bonnefoy – GlobalPost.com

The consideration of military pardons reveals that Chile still has a lot of healing to do.

SANTIAGO — The possibility that human rights violators may be included in a general pardon next year is revealing how far Chile is from healing the wounds of its past of torture, executions and disappearances.

When the Catholic Bishops Conference announced last month that it would submit a proposal to the government for a massive pardon of prisoners on occasion of Chile’s Bicentennial celebrations, the right-wing opposition jumped on the opportunity to include its imprisoned military allies.

For years, these rightist parties, founded in the ’80s by civilians supporting the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, were accomplices to its well documented human rights atrocities, refusing to acknowledge they ever took place. With the return to democracy and their need to become politically palatable to the electorate, they timidly began to admit the truth, but have nevertheless worked hard to put an end to human rights trials.

President Michelle Bachelet initially said she would consider any and all proposals for a pardon but alleges that her words were misinterpreted and that she is not seeking any sort of pardon for the military. Her father, an air force general, was arrested after the military coup that toppled socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973 and died in prison after repeated torture sessions. She and her mother were arrested and held in the infamous torture center Villa Grimaldi before being forced into exile.More than 50 agents are serving prison terms for human rights violations, while another 700 are still subject to excruciatingly slow judicial investigations. So far, very few have cooperated in providing any information that could lead to finding the more than 1,000 missing, or establish responsibilities for thousands of other deaths. In 2001, a government initiative to have the military provide information on the disappeared produced a list of 200 victims and their supposed whereabouts. Much of the information turned out to be false.

Many families of those imprisoned or killed are still waiting for the culprits to be charged and say that justice is far from served.

“Most of our disappeared continue to be an absolute mystery. We don’t know what happened to them, where they were taken, or who, when and how they were killed. Many of those who have been sentenced don’t want to provide information. There is still a long ways to go before we can say justice has been done,” said Laura Elgueta, whose brother Luis disappeared without a trace in 1976. No one has been indicted for his abduction.

On the other side are those who would distinguish between those who willingly committed human rights violations and those who were forced to do so by their superiors; some take an even harder line and insist no crimes were committed.

The pardon suggestion has had several unlikely supporters, including some in Bachelet’s government.

One is her undersecretary of aviation, retired air force captain Raul Vergara. “The military shouldn’t be excluded from the pardon just because they are military,” he said in an interview with the conservative paper El Mercurio.

His comments wouldn’t have caused such uproar if he hadn’t been part of the group of air force officers jailed and tortured along with Bachelet’s father.

In a public statement, the Organization of Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers in the Case “Bachelet and Others 1973” called on the government not to pardon any of their fellow officers.

“The members of the military serving sentences haven’t been convicted because they are military, but because they have committed horrendous crimes … Pardoning them would be a terrible example for future military generations, who could behave in a similar fashion, knowing that in the end, they would also be pardoned,” reads the statement.

The Catholic Church proposal would free prisoners over 70, those suffering from terminal illnesses, mothers with small children, petty criminals and first offenders, and could apply to some 3,000 convicts and another 50,000 already on conditional freedom. Once the president receives the proposal, the executive will draft a bill and submit the pardon to congressional approval.The Bishops Conference insists that it won’t include the worst human rights violators, such as Manuel Contreras, director of the secret intelligence service DINA responsible for most violations, and who has accumulated sentences for almost 300 years for multiple crimes.

But organizations such as the September 10 Movement, which defends the military coup, are calling for the liberation of whom they consider to be “political prisoners.”

“What Chile needs is an end to all these investigations, not a pardon. There is nothing to forgive, because it isn’t a crime to have sworn loyalty to our country,” said Bernardita Huerta, a member of the movement and the daughter of deceased navy admiral Ismael Huerta, Pinochet’s first foreign minister and later Chilean ambassador to the United Nations, where he denied that his country’s military was abducting and disappearing opponents.

“All of our political prisoners should be freed and the legal cases against the rest dropped,” she added. “And if they want to put anyone on trial, then let them be judged by someone who isn’t a Marxist.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the length of Manuel Contreras’ sentences. ]]> http://languages.oberlin.edu/hist293/blog/2009/08/20/a-question-of-justice/feed/ 0 http://languages.oberlin.edu/hist293/blog/2009/03/10/maximo-represor-alega-por-sus-derechos-humanos/ http://languages.oberlin.edu/hist293/blog/2009/03/10/maximo-represor-alega-por-sus-derechos-humanos/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:40:22 +0000 svolk http://languages.oberlin.edu/hist293/blog/2009/03/10/maximo-represor-alega-por-sus-derechos-humanos/ El Diario / La Prensa
March 9, 2009

El abogado Javier Gómez en declaraciones a la radio Cooperativa dijo que enviará una carta a la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos mediante correo electrónico.

“Estamos impulsando esta carta ante la falla de las instancias judiciales de nuestro país”, dijo el abogado de Contreras.

“Los derechos humanos no es monopolio de ningún sector político ni de un país, nos benefician a todos por el hecho de ser persona, y entre esas personas está Manuel Contreras”, señaló el abogado.

Dijo que también demandará la inmediata liberación de su cliente desde el penal Cordillera, exclusivo para violadores de los derechos humanos, y que se le aplique la medida cautelar de arresto domiciliario.

“No se han respetado las garantías básicas que da la Convención Interamericana de Derechos Humanos para toda persona que se somete a juicio”, declaró el abogado.

Contreras, 79 años, creó y encabezó la Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, DINA, la policía represiva de la dictadura de Pinochet, tras el derrocamiento del presidente socialista Salvador Allende en 1973.

A la DINA y a su sucesora, la Central Nacional de Inteligencia, CNI, se le atribuyen las peores violaciones a los derechos humanos bajo el régimen militar y el mayor número de detenidos desaparecidos.

Contreras está condenado a cerca de 300 años de cárcel entre las sentencias definitivas y por confirmar. Ingresó al penal Cordillera cuando cumplía arresto domiciliario, luego que la Corte Suprema confirmó su sentencia a 12 años por su responsabilidad en la desaparición de un joven comunista.

Antes cumplió una sentencia de 7 años de presidio por el asesinato en Washington del ex canciller socialista chileno Orlando Letelier.

Mireya García, dirigente de la Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, calificó la acción de Contreras y su abogado como “incalificable”.

“Me parece una burla y una nueva agresión para las víctimas”, afirmó.

SANTIAGO — The Chilean Supreme Court has reduced sentences handed down to five agents of the country’s 1973-1990 military regime for the disappearance of two leftists, judiciary officials said.

The ruling, which cannot be appealed, was issued in a case involving the kidnapping and disappearance of Carmen Diaz Daricarrere and Eugenio Ivan Montti Cordero, two members of the Revolutionary Left Movement who were detained on Feb. 13, 1975, in Santiago by agents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s notorious secret police force, known as DINA.

Daricarrere was a nursing student at the University of Chile while Montti had completed his engineering studies at the State Technical University; survivors have testified to seeing them at DINA’s “Villa Grimaldi” torture and detention center before trace of them was lost.

On Jan. 21, an appeals court in Santiago had upheld a 15-year sentence given to ex-DINA chief retired Gen. Manuel Contreras and two erstwhile colonels, Marcelo Moren Brito and Rolf Wenderoth.

That court also sentenced ex-Brig. Gen. Miguel Krasnoff and former non-commissioned officer Basclay Zapata to five years behind bars.

But the Supreme Court, in a 3-2 ruling, reduced Contreras’ sentence to seven years; the judges also reduced the sentences for Moren and Wenderoth to four years each and those of Krasnoff and Zapata to 541 days.

All of these individuals, however, are currently in prison serving sentences for other human rights violations. In the case of the 79-year-old Contreras, he has already been sentenced to two life terms for kidnappings, forced disappearances and extrajudicial assassinations.

In another 3-2 decision Friday, the Supreme Court ruled against victims’ family members who had sued the state for reparations for the dictatorship-era crimes.

The 1973-1990 regime headed by Pinochet, who died in December 2006 of a heart attack at the age of 91, is blamed for some 3,000 deaths, and many of the bodies have never been found.

Last week we briefly mentioned the outrage in Argentina over a judge’s order to free fourteen men convicted of “Dirty War” atrocities. Though the leader of the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo deemed the decision as a “slap in the face,” the court decided that the men were held for several years without facing trial.

Only hours after the court’s asinine decision, another Argentine court prevented the travesty of justice:

An Argentine high court Friday suspended a controversial decision to grant bail to high-profile defendants accused of torturing and killing dissidents during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

The court instead sent the cases to the Supreme Court after prosecutor Raul Plee appealed the ruling. The decision will keep the suspects behind bars until the Supreme Court ruling, at a date still to be determined.

One of those originally to be freed on bail was Alfredo Astiz, known as the “Blond Angel of Death” (image). Astiz had been held over the disappearance of two French nuns, a Swedish adolescent and the founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Image- BBC News
Sources- The Latin Americanist, BBC News, AP, Reuters, AFP

PINILLA DE LA VALDERIA, Spain-Many people in this
verdant countryside know their hills and valleys hide a
terrible treasure from the Spanish Civil War: Skeletons
of loved ones, just a few generations gone.In recent weeks, a judicial order had given them hope
that Spain might unearth some of those dead and begin a
belated reckoning with that bloody period in their
history. National Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, famous
for his international pursuit of war criminals, ordered
a historic probe of suspected mass graves to consider
whether crimes against humanity were committed by the
late Gen. Francisco Franco and his supporters during
that time of turmoil.

On Tuesday, Garzon backed down, dropping his role in the
case after prosecutors challenged his jurisdiction. But
he called for lower-court judges to pick up where he
left off, demanding that the Franco regime -during the
war and for years beyond-answer to Spain’s pain.

It was not right “to grant [Franco and his supporters]
impunity, forgiveness and judicial oblivion, labeling
their actions as mere political repression,” Garzon said
in a brief that ended his personal quest.

It was the latest twist in a controversy that threatened
to force Spain to confront its past, something Garzon
judged it finally ready to do as he set out in search of
evidence of 70-year-old war crimes. For the first time,
he had openly asked what happened to the tens of
thousands of people who vanished during a 1936 military
uprising and the four decades afterward.

With his original 68-page judicial warrant, filed in
October, Garzon had broken the silent pact that, since
Franco’s death in 1975, had allowed Spain to push
smoothly toward stable democracy. In a sort of
compromise for their shared future, adversaries from
right and left had passed an amnesty law that simply
closed the curtain on wartime prosecutions.

Last year, the parliament passed a sweeping law
condemning Franco’s rule and offering restitution to its
victims. But Garzon demanded that Spain go further.

He ordered 19 suspected mass graves to be opened,
including one believed to hold Federico Garcia Lorca,
Spain’s most heralded 20th Century poet, who was
executed in 1936.

A panel of prosecutors on the High Court balked, asking
for time to review Garzon’s order and decide whether it
would have legally overridden the amnesty law. On
Tuesday, Garzon acceded to their challenge, but he
indicated he was doing it only so that lower courts
might move more quickly.

It remains unclear whether local judges will indeed take
up Garzon’s mission-or have any incentive to do so.

Garzon alleged that skeletons in the graves, if
identified as Spaniards who opposed fascism, would be
evidence that Franco and 34 aides and generals planned
mass murder and committed a “crime against humanity.”

Franco and his forces systematically eliminated left-
wing opponents, Garzon said in a legal finding that
immediately riled right-wing opposition in Spain.
Popular Party founder Manuel Fraga derided the Garzon
initiative as “nonsensical” and a “grave error to
resuscitate this tragedy.” The conservative newspaper El
Mundo called the decision “quite simply crazy.”

Garzon’s order-which claimed that 114,266 people were
“disappeared” under Franco-was supplemented with data
from grass-roots groups. Garzon charged that criminal
killings started with the military uprising of 1936 and
continued through 1951, far past the end of the actual
war in 1939.

The legal initiative came last month as a small band of
gravediggers searched a wooded area near Leon, urged on
by the still-bright memory of a 107-year-old man. His
story was a typical tip that volunteers from the non-
profit Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory
work diligently to check out. The old man said he was
forced to dig graves in 1936.

Helpers drove a backhoe into the mossy earth and
appeared to end another civil war mystery. The bones of
five men were lifted from the ground and a new mass
grave was documented.

The recovery association has excavated 120 mass graves
since 2000. Emilio Silva, a onetime journalist who has
spearheaded the movement to document losses from the
conflict, said the war still throws a shadow across the
country’s psyche. Even today, when his elderly aunt
talks about the war, she whispers. Silva said he
believed Garzon’s effort was admirable.

“Fear stopped all the questions. The government
structure changed after Franco, but the social
structure-who knows whom and who relied on whom-didn’t
change with democracy,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Unos 30 intelectuales artistas y familiares de la víctimas del franquismo han presentado hoy en Madrid un manifiesto de apoyo al juez Garzón. El documento, con el título ‘Hemos conocido’ cuenta con el respaldo del premio Nobel de Literatura José Saramago, el escritor argentino Ernesto Sábato, el historiador Ian Gibson o el cantautor Paco Ibánez, quien ha presentado el manifiesto junto a Cristina Almeida en el círculo de Bellas Artes

A partir de ahora el texto podrá firmarse. Sus promotores quieren entregarlo con el mayor número de apoyos al Gobierno el próximo 14 de abril, día en que se conmemora la proclamación de la Segunda República. .

Durante la presentación del manifiesto, el presidente de la Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, Emilio Silva, ha denunciado que el fiscal de la Audiencia Nacional que se opuso a que el juez Garzón instruyera el caso de las fosas ha hecho “injusticia” con una mano y “política” con la otra.

El representante de la asociación ha afirmado que lo que ha hecho Garzón es una “inhibición activa”, gracias a la cual “da a conocer los hechos” sucedidos bajo la dictadura franquista “tal como fueron”.

Además, un grupo de unos 40 juristas suscribe hoy otro manifiesto de Amnistía Internacional con el título ‘Para pasar página primero hay que leerla’ en el que se denuncia que la justicia española haya investigado crímenes contra la humanidad en varios países y se hayan abstenido de hacerlo en su propio Estado.

By VICTORIA BURNETT

MADRID — A high-profile judge on Tuesday dropped a sensitive inquiry into atrocities that took place during the era of Franco, Spain’s former dictator, ending what had promised to be the first criminal investigation of wrongs committed by Franco and his allies.

The judge, Baltasar Garzón, last month declared himself competent to investigate the killings of 114,000 people at the hands of Franco’s supporters during the 1936-1939 civil war and the dictatorship that followed and ordered the exhumation of at least 19 mass graves. He accused Franco and 34 former generals and ministers of crimes against humanity.

However, Judge Garzón said Tuesday that he was dropping the case against Franco and his allies after state prosecutors questioned his jurisdiction over crimes committed 70 years ago by people who are now dead and whose crimes were covered by an amnesty passed in 1977. In a 152-page statement, he passed responsibility to regional courts for opening 19 mass graves believed to hold the remains of hundreds of victims, including those of Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet.

Advocates who have pressed for the state to take responsibility for exhuming hundreds of graves and pursue some process of retroactive justice said Judge Garzón’s decision was a symbolic blow and blamed a lack of political will in the Socialist government to push for a reckoning with Spain’s dark past.

“It’s a disgrace. We have teams of Spanish peacekeepers exhuming mass graves in Bosnia and yet we can’t even deal with our own graves,” said José María Pedreño, president of the State Federation of Forums for Historical Memory, by telephone. “As a Spaniard, I find this shameful. How can we call ourselves a stable, mature democracy if we can’t resolve this issue?”

However, those advocates said it was unclear how much Judge Garzón’s statement would affect the process of opening graves, begun by volunteers eight years ago. Emilio Silva, head of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, an advocacy group, said Judge Garzón’s court order would potentially help push a process that so far has depended on weekend volunteers and has little official backing. Mr. Pedreño said that attempts to get regional courts to open investigations were usually fruitless.

Some who had closely followed the legal debate over whether Judge Garzón had jurisdiction over the civil war crimes said his decision was a setback for a judge who had built an international reputation by pushing the limits of the law to bring cases against human rights violators like Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.

However, they said they believed that the judge knew he was likely to be challenged and that he opened the investigation partly in the hope of putting pressure on the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Judge Garzón’s investigation had provoked an outcry from conservatives who said that raking over the past would serve only to reopen wounds.

“From a social point of view it has been positive,” Mr. Pedreño said. “He has sent up a cloud of dust, prompted debate about this issue and awoken our consciences again.”