REUTERS

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, left, sits next to his lawyer at the start of his trial at the Supreme Court in Madrid.

Madrid - Spain's crusading judge Baltasar Garzon is due to testify in his own defence on Tuesday in a criminal case that has divided public opinion and turned the international spotlight on Spain's justice system.

Garzon - best known as the man who secured the 1998 London arrest of Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet - is accused of abusing power in ordering an investigation into tens of thousands of suspected murders by the forces of right-wing dictator General Francisco Franco.

Some Spaniards back the prosecution and two separate cases against him. But many also consider them a politically motivated attempt to bring the high-profile judge down or to prevent a truth commission into the dictatorship which ran from 1939-75.

If found guilty of any of the charges against him, the 56-year-old could receive a 20-year ban from working as an investigating magistrate in Spain.

Thousands of people rallied in Madrid on Sunday against the trials. Among them were Spaniards who say their family members and friends were murdered or tortured by Franco's troops in the 1936-39 Civil War and in the ensuing four-decade dictatorship.

“We're confused, terrified, indignant, embarrassed,” poet Luis Garcia Montero told demonstrators on Sunday in a square near to the Supreme Court where Garzon goes on trial.

Spanish actress Pilar Bardem (C, right of sign) takes part in a demonstration in support of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon in Madrid.

REUTERS

Unionists, left-wing politicians, human rights groups, legal experts and artists like film directors Pedro Almodovar and Isabel Coixet have criticised the prosecution of Garzon.

Garzon is also accused of having benefited financially from courses in New York sponsored by big companies, and having breached defendants' rights by allowing the recording of conversations between lawyers and their clients in a corruption case involving members of the centre-right People's Party.

“It's embarrassing that in Spain, which was a pioneer in opposing genocides, representatives of the old fascists have put the judge in the dock that wanted to investigate the crimes of fascism,” said Garcia Montero.

Garzon was once admired across the political spectrum for his investigations of violent Basque separatists ETA and for uncovering a dirty war backed by the Socialist government in the 1980s, but he alienated many when he tried to probe Francoism.

Critics say his star status has made him sloppy and his Franco probe breached Spain's 1977 amnesty law which pardoned crimes under the dictatorship in order to reconcile the country's left and right, and allow for a peaceful democracy.

Some people felt Garzon's investigation, which started in 2008, was unfeasible. It was dropped in its original form, some say under pressure from the then Socialist government.

He urged regional courts to carry on and help the relatives of victims who wanted to recover remains from mass graves and give them a decent burial.

Many analysts are astonished Spain's Supreme Court has essentially delivered a show trial over a judge's interpretation of law on the basis of complaints from two right-wing organisations Clean Hands and Liberty and Identity. The state public prosecutor was against the trial.

“There's a hell of a lot of leeway (in the Spanish legal system) for political prejudice, and it would be difficult not to conclude political prejudice has come in to this,” Paul Preston, a British historian on Spain, told Reuters.

“The judiciary in Spain, although there are a number of liberal judges, is still for all kinds of reasons...to put it mildly, extremely conservative, if not actively pro-Francoist.”

Garzon ordered the investigation after associations of Franco victims asked for help tracking down the remains of family members suspected to have been buried in mass graves.

Historian Preston estimates 200 000 civilians were killed far from the front line in the war and thousands more in the ensuing dictatorship, a situation he has dubbed “The Spanish Holocaust” in his latest book on the war and its aftermath.

After the Republicans were defeated in the 1936-1939 Civil War, for decades people around Spain were too scared to talk about atrocities they knew had been perpetrated by Franco's regime in their towns and villages.

To this day there are mass graves that have not been dug up.

While left-wing newspaper El Pais has criticised the trials, conservative and right-leaning newspapers have accused Garzon's supporters of undermining the reputation of Spain's judiciary.

In a survey in the spring of 2010 when judges first said Garzon should be tried, 65 percent of Spaniards told pollsters Metroscopia the country's justice system was politicised and 61 percent thought Garzon was being persecuted. - Reuters