Spain has become the latest battleground in the fight over the soul of international justice. On Tuesday, its lower house of Parliament called for a limit on its universal jurisdiction law over international crimes, irrespective of where they are committed, to cases in which there are Spanish victims or the alleged perpetrator is on Spanish soil.

Spain should immediately halt plans to extradite an ethnic Chechen to Russia, where he will be at risk of torture.

Spain's accelerating effort to send back unaccompanied children who enter the country illegally might subject them to danger, ill-treatment and detention.

On October 16, 1998, London police arrested General Pinochet on a warrant from a Spanish judge for human rights crimes. In the ten years since, the world has become a smaller place for brutal despots.

An investigation by the Spanish Ombudsman has revealed serious shortcomings in two Canary Islands emergency care centers housing up to 200 unaccompanied migrant children, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a May 7, 2008 letter to the Spanish government, Human Rights Watch expressed its deep concern that the government of Spain is considering the extradition to Russia of Murat Ajmedovich Gasayev, in reliance on diplomatic assurances against torture and ill-treatment proffered by the Russian authorities. Murat Gasayev, an ethnic Chechen, was arrested and detained in August 2004 by the Federal Security Service (FSB) in Ingushetia and claims that during his interrogation he was tortured and ill-treated, before being released without charge. Human Rights Watch has reason to believe that, if extradited to Russia, Gasayev would again face a real risk of torture and ill-treatment, as well as the denial of a fair trial due to the potential use of evidence extracted from other detainees under torture, and respectfully requests that the Spanish government reject as unreliable and insufficient Russia’s diplomatic assurances in the Gasayev case, halt its efforts to extradite him, and refuse to seek such assurances in any future case where there is a real risk of torture or ill-treatment on return.

We are writing in advance of the upcoming Article 36 Committee
meeting in Brussels, at which you will discuss the EU Network of contact points in respect of persons responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes (EU Network).

Hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children from Africa held in government facilities in the Canary Islands are at risk of violence and ill-treatment.