Spain's best-known judge, Baltasar Garzon, suffered an abrupt and dramatic end to his legal career when he was banned from his profession for 11 years for authorising illicit recordings of lawyers' conversations during a huge political corruption case. He has vowed to fight the ruling.
Garzon, who is well knownfor pursuing international human rights cases, is most famous for his attempt to extradite General Augusto Pinochet in 1998, which saw the former Chilean dictator detained for a year in Britain.
He also succeeded in putting Adolfo Scilingo, a notorious member of the 1970s Argentine junta, behind bars.
Yesterday's verdict, though, means Garzon's days as Spain's most intrepid legal watchdog are over. The 56-year-old was barred after his wiretaps in the so-called "Gurtel case" - a corruption scandal in which entrepreneurs were accused of paying off politicians from the ruling Partido Popular party in order to obtain regional government contracts - were described by the judges as "practices of totalitarian regimes".
Garzon must also pay the defence team's costs, as well as an as yet unspecified fine. He had claimed the wiretaps were necessary because he believed witnesses in the Gurtel case were giving their defence lawyers instructions to launder money.
But the statement by the judges, who issued a unanimous verdict, gave no quarter and argued that Garzon had used police-state methods that stripped away the basic legal rights of the accused, engaged in professional misconduct and violated constitutional guarantees.
Garzon also faces two other trials. He is accused of overstepping his authority in 2008 during his attempts to investigate human rights abuses during the Franco era and he has been charged with accepting illicit payments from the bank Santander.
