The Spanish jurist Baltasar Garzón criticized the ‘lawfare’ (judicial war) in Buenos Aires as a direct attack on democracy in various Latin American countries, since, in his opinion, “it is the prostitution of law”.
The former magistrate of the Spanish National Court participated in the first discussion table of the conference “Popular will and democracy: from the military party to the judicial party, threats to democracy”, with which the Puebla Groupa forum that brings together progressive leaders from Latin America and Spain, offered its support to the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández, since Tuesday, for what it considers a judicial persecution against her.
“That is the ‘lawfare’: the instrumentalization of the law that subverts the democratic system itself, is the prostitution of the law. It stops being right because it abandons us, ”he commented.
Garzón specifically referred to the Roads case, for which the former Argentine president (2007-2015) received a sentence, last December, of 6 years in prison and perpetual disqualification from holding public office, a sentence that politics can still appeal.
“That sentence is a legal aberration. There is not a single piece of evidence in those 1,600 pages,” explained the jurist, who commented that in this damning text “there are only indications” and “presumptions, opinions and arguments that are empty of content, but disseminated by media groups seem to be forceful. ”.
Garzón did not hesitate to call this way of counting in the media “the politics of the headlines, the culture of the headlines.”
The jurist gained international fame for issuing an indictment in 1998 against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for the death and torture of Spanish citizens during his tenure (1974-1990), which resulted in his detention for almost five months in the United Kingdom. , although he was not finally extradited to Spain.
The Puebla Group convened this international meeting in support of Cristina Fernández, within the framework of the III World Forum on Human Rights, which is being held this week in Buenos Aires.
This discussion forum was created in 2019 in the Mexican city of Puebla and includes leaders such as former presidents José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Spain), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Evo Morales (Bolivia) and the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
