A judge in Spain heard evidence on Friday of alleged torture during the rule of the country’s late dictator Francisco Franco, in what rights groups say is the first case of its kind to be accepted for legal review.
The hearing at a Madrid court involved allegations against five former police officers. The lead witness, Julio Pacheco, told reporters outside that he had recounted to a judge how he was tortured by police in 1975, when he was a 19-year-old student.
Pacheco said he hoped his testimony was a step toward ‘starting to break down the wall of silence and impunity’ regarding abuses during Franco’s rule. His wife also testified.
Previously, judges have refused to hear such cases because of a 1977 amnesty law that blocked the prosecution of Franco-era crimes. The law was part of Spain’s effort to put that period behind it and strengthen its fledgling democracy following Franco’s death two years earlier.
With victims and human rights groups arguing that torture and other serious crimes should not go unpunished, the left-leaning socialist government in power last year opened the door to possible prosecutions for crimes committed under the dictatorship. ALSO READ: Senate approves law that bans support for Franco and seeks to bring ‘justice’ to victims.
The Democratic Memory Law established procedures to investigate human rights violations between the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and the dictatorship’s collapse after Franco’s death in 1975. ALSO READ: Spain rules Franco regime ‘illegal’ with new ‘Democratic Memory Law’.
Other complaints have been filed with Spanish courts, but Pacheco’s was the first to be heard by a judge, according to right groups supporting the legal action.
Pacheco’s complaint names five police officers who allegedly were present when he was being tortured. Paloma Garcia of Amnesty International’s Spanish branch, which is one of the groups supporting the action, said investigators haven’t been able to locate some of the officers and weren’t sure whether the named men were still alive.
The judge will later decide whether there is enough evidence for the case to go to trial.
The socialist and left-wing coalition government led by the current acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez took several high-profile actions on Franco-era issues. They included making the central government responsible for the recovery from mass graves of the bodies of tens of thousands of people who went missing during the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship. ALSO READ: Initial forensic work begins to exhume bodies of 128 victims of Civil War.
¡Hito histórico!
— Amnistía Internacional España (@amnistiaespana) September 15, 2023
Julio Pacheco, torturado por la policía durante el franquismo, ha sido escuchado. Es #LaPimeraDe100 querellas de víctimas del franquismo admitidas por tribunales españoles
¡#JusticiaEsMemoria!
Cc @sira_centro @centre_IRIDIA @lacomunapresxs @Ce_AQUA pic.twitter.com/ksNmxFsEtO
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