Profile: Judge Baltasar Garzon

Judge Garzon: High profile and highly respected

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon is widely recognised for his determination to bring suspects to justice, no matter where they may be or how old the crime.

He came to prominence in the late 1990s, when he campaigned for the extradition former Chilean military ruler Augusto Pinochet, from London to Spain for human rights abuses.

In late 2003 Judge Garzon compiled a 692-page indictment which called for the arrest of 35 men, including Osama Bin Laden, for their alleged membership of a terrorist group. The number of suspects was later increased to 41.

In 2005 24 faced justice in Madrid, in Europe's biggest trial of alleged al-Qaeda operatives.

Eighteen were found guilty of belonging to an al-Qaeda cell and sentenced to long prison terms.

These included the suspected leader of the group, Syrian-born businessman Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who was found guilty of helping to organise the 9/11 attacks in the US. Six defendants were acquitted.

Argentine cases

Judge Garzon was also behind the trial in Spain of Argentine ex-naval officer Adolfo Scilingo who was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 640 years in jail in April 2005.

Scilingo was the first person linked to Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship to be tried abroad, but not the only one that Judge Garzon had in his sights.

Under Spanish law, judges have the right to try foreigners suspected of genocidal acts that have taken place outside Spain.

Mr Garzon is one of six investigating judges for Spain's National Court which, like many other European countries, operates an inquisitorial system, as opposed to the adversarial system used by the US and UK.

The investigating judge's role is to examine the cases assigned to him by the court, gathering evidence and evaluating whether the case should be brought to trial. He does not try the cases himself.

In the late 1990s, Judge Garzon started by looking into the deaths of Spaniards in Argentina under the 1976-1983 military regime.

Up to 30,000 people were killed or disappeared in the Argentine military's campaign against what it called left-wing insurgents.

In 2003, 46 former officials from the regime - including former dictators Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera - were arrested in Argentina after Judge Garzon made a request for their extradition.

He had accused the men of genocide and crimes against humanity.

However, the extradition request failed and the men were freed when the Spanish authorities decided that if they were to be tried it should be in their home country.

Eta target

More successfully, he secured the extradition of a former Argentine military officer, Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, from Mexico to Spain to face charges of genocide and terrorism.

And although Judge's Garzon's attempts to extradite General Pinochet failed, Chile's Supreme Court has since ruled the former military leader is fit to stand trial on murder and kidnapping charges.

Campaigners in Latin America have welcomed Judge Garzon's work

Despite the apparent international focus of his investigations, Judge Garzon's work did start closer to home.

He first gained prominence for his actions against the semi-official GAL death squads which operated in Spain's Basque region in the early 1980s.

That ended with the former Socialist Interior Minister, Jose Barrionuevo, going to jail.

The judge has also been active in Madrid's crackdown on the Basque separatist group Eta, and is reported to have been on the group's list of assassination targets.

Seen as a hard-working, incorruptible and highly principled investigator, Mr Garzon has won respect, with some human rights groups campaigning for him to receive a Nobel Peace Prize.

But his indictment of Bin Laden provoked a mixed reaction in the Spanish press, with one paper accusing the magistrate of having an insatiable hunger for fame.

Teaching role

He rarely voices his opinions in public, but he did publicly declare his opposition to Spain's involvement in the US-led war in Iraq.

The war was an "an act of madness", he said, and the UN was being "destroyed by thousands of bombs and missiles launched through an arbitrary, unilateral decision".

He is also known to harbour political ambitions and spent several months as a junior minister in a previous Socialist government.

He walked out, saying he was not being given the tools to do the job. Party sources said he was upset about being passed over for higher posts.

From 1 March 2005, Judge Garzon is taking nine months' leave to give classes about international terrorism in the United States.