Judge Baltasar Garzón to speak next week at University of Washington

Judge Baltasar Garzón will speak at the University of Washington (Seattle) next Tuesday, February 23, at 6 pm. Information on the talk follows. If you are able to attend -- unfortunately, I am not - I would really appreciate you sharing your reflections here via the "comments" feature of this post. Perhaps they will put up a podcast or video, so we may all take part in the discussion.

Baltasar Garzón, the esteemed Spanish judge and human rights advocate, will deliver a major public lecture on the topic of “Human Rights and Historical Memory.” His lecture, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Gates Public Service Law Program. His lecture is also one in a year-long linked film and lecture series, “Lives, History, Memory: The Spanish Civil War Seventy Years After" that is sponsored by the Department of History's Hanauer Outreach Fund and other units on campus, including the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities.

Garzón is one of the six investigating judges for Spain’s National Court. His function is to investigate the cases that are 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. Garzón rose to prominence as an international figure with his indictment of leaders of the former Chilean military junta, including dictator Augusto Pinochet, on charges of genocide, terrorism and torture during the 1973-1990 dictatorship. Garzón has also played a key role in indicting suspected Basque terrorists. Most recently he has brought charges against the Franco regime for crimes against humanity, and ordered the exhumation of mass graves from Spain's bloody civil war (1936-39). For more information, contact Prof. Tony Geist
(tgeist@uw.edu , 206-543-2022).