MADRID — Spanish prosecutors today formally recommended against an investigation into allegations that six senior Bush administration officials gave legal cover for the torture of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
While their ruling is not binding, the announcement all but dooms prospects for the case against the men going forward. On Thursday, Spain’s top law-enforcement official Candido Conde-Pumpido said he would not support an investigation against the officials — including former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Prosecutors said any such investigation ought to be conducted in the United States, not Spain. They also questioned the idea of bringing charges against lawyers and presidential advisers who neither carried out the alleged torture themselves, nor were ultimately responsible for ordering it.
The prosecutors wrote that going after lawyers who wrote nonbinding recommendations for the president and his senior staff, rather than targeting higher-ranking officials who authorized the alleged torture, “raises important problems from a legal standpoint.”
It also questioned the appropriateness of a case that would effectively put on trial “all of the policies of the past U.S. administration (as reproachable as they may be),” saying such an endeavor was beyond the scope of the Spanish legal system.
The case is one of several legal actions taken or in the works against Bush administration officials overseas, and the first to get as far as it did.
On Thursday, President Barack Obama assured CIA operatives they would not be prosecuted for their rough interrogation tactics, and his attorney general offered them legal help if anyone else takes them to court over methods approved by the Bush administration.
The Spanish case was brought to investigative judge Baltasar Garzon last month by a group of human rights lawyers.
In today’s writ, the prosecutors recommended that if any investigation is opened, Garzon should be replaced by another judge who is already investigating whether secret CIA flights to or from Guantanamo entered Spanish airspace or landed at Spanish airports.
A few hours later, Garzon formally stepped aside. Observers say the departure of Garzon was another serious blow for the human rights lawyers, who saw him as sympathetic to their cause.
Spanish law gives its courts jurisdiction beyond national borders in cases of torture, war crimes and other heinous offenses, based on a doctrine known as universal justice, but the government has said it wants to rein in the process.
In addition to Gonzales, the complaint named ex-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes.
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