A Spanish court has launched a criminal investigation into whether six Bush administration lawyers including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the Bush administration’s use of torture at Guantanamo. Spain’s law allows it to claim jurisdiction in the case because five Spanish citizens or residents who were prisoners at Guantanamo Bay say they were tortured there. The case was sent to the Spanish prosecutor’s office for review by Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish judge who ordered the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998. The other former Bush administration officials facing investigation are former Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee; Pentagon official Douglas Feith; Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington and and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes. Michael Ratnerof the Center for Constitutional Rights praised the Spanish court’s decision and said arrest warrants might have already been issued.

Michael Ratner, author of The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: “If you are any of those six at this point, you don’t want to go to 25 countries that make up the European Union because you may be subject to immediate arrest. What will happen next is this investigation will most likely continue in a very vigorous form. It will look at those six, and it will also have the possibility of going up the chain of command, not just to Rumsfeld, but all the way up to Cheney and Bush. So it’s a serious investigation, it’s one the Obama administration has to take seriously. So it means for them that the pressure is increasing in this country for them to open its own criminal investigation.”