MADRID, Dec 29: The Spanish judge who has made a world name for himself fighting terrorism launched a stinging attack on Sunday against US President George Bush, saying his government was trampling on the rights of suspects.

“The Bush administration does not recognise the rights of terrorists to defend themselves and has made those rights all but disappear,” Baltasar Garzon said in an interview with El Pais newspaper.

Garzon, who has fought against Basque separatists in Spain and led international efforts to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for war crimes, said Bush had crushed personal liberties since the September 11 attacks.

“The fight against terrorism since September 11 has increased the risk of a false system of security being put in place to the detriment of freedoms and rights,” he said.

“The case of terrorists held in Guantanamo (the US base in Cuba), Afghanistan and Pakistan proves that security is trumping every other principle of justice or rights,” Garzon said.

He garnered international attention for his prosecution of cases against the Basque militant group ETA, which has been waging an armed campaign for an independent Basque homeland straddling northern Spain and southern France.

He also won the extradition of Pinochet from Britain to Spain, although the Chilean strongman was finally allowed to return to his homeland.

In the interview with El Pais, Garzon also attacked US plans for a potential war in Iraq and lambasted Israel for its policy toward the Palestinians.

“We have only defined one kind of terrorism — that coming from groups identified as such — but not the terror that can come from the other side,” he said.

“When the Israeli army attacks Palestinians with missiles, and destroys the houses of a village because a suicide bomber came from there, it is using terrorist methods. But we don’t speak about it, we accept or ignore it.”

Bush said in his weekly address on Saturday that his administration would “prosecute the war on terror with patience and focus and determination” in the new year.

The US president has faced severe criticism on the international stage.

German writer Guenter Grass, the winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for literature, said in an interview in Germany’s Welt am Sonntag paper on Sunday that Bush was “truly dangerous” and a major threat to world peace.

He compared the US president to a Shakespearean character who wants only to appear before his father, a dying king, and tell him: “Look, I have accomplished what you wanted.”—AFP