Spanish Judge Baltasor Garzón has been banned by the Supreme Court in Madrid for 11 years for having committed the offence of "having made an unlawful judicial decision in the knowledge that it was invalid...namely ordering the eavesdropping/wiretapping of conversations between the detainees and their lawyers." This is what allegedly occurred during the course of his investigation of the Gurtel case which concerned very serious political corruption in Spain.
Garzón is known on a global level for ordering the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, and trying to put him on trial in Madrid for crimes against humanity. During his career, Garzón took on cases using the principle of universal jurisdiction - the idea that crimes can be prosecuted anywhere in the world. He sought to apply this concept to international law crimes committed in countries like that of Rwanda and Tibet.
As the Bulletin went to press, a letter from number of Irish human rights lawyers protesting the Spanish Supreme Court's actions was published in the Irish Times.
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Click here to see a separate article by the Guardian.