The door towards accountability for human rights criminals acting under color of government authority open a little wider on June 10. That day, Mexico's supreme court ruled that Ricardo Cavallo of Argentina could be extradited to Spain to stand trial for genocide and terrorism.

Cavallo was a captain in Argentina's navy, and an "intelligence specialist" during the years of the military dictatorship and its "dirty war," against leftists, unionists, and other opposition members in the 1970s and 1980s. Known by the alias Serpico Cavallo is accused of taking part in the abduction, torture, and murder of at least 227 people, the torture of 110 others, and the kidnapping of 16 babies whose parents were killed while in military custody.

The extradition warrant was issued by Spanish Supreme Court Judge Balthasar Garzon, who first gained international notice by seeking the extradition of Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet in 1998 while the latter was in Britain seeking medical treatment. Britain's courts eventually ruled in favor of the extradition request, but the government of Tony Blair said Pinochet was too ill to be tried and sent the General back to Chile. Subsequent attempts to try Pinochet in Chile have failed, generally on health grounds.

The present case of Cavallo strengthens the concept of "universal jurisdiction," the developing legal principle that crimes against humanity can be prosecuted in any country, not only in the jurisdiction in which they occurred. This is important not least because governments connected human rights violators are rarely brought to justice in their own countries. After the end of Argentina's military dictatorship, a few officers were prosecuted, but in 1989 and 1990, then president Carlos Menem granted pardons and released those few who had been convicted. Amnesty laws passed under military pressure in the 1980s continue to protect those accused of human rights violations during the years of the dirty war.

As part of his ongoing investigations into human rights violations, Garzon indicted Cavallo in 1999, as well as 90 other Argentine military officials. At the time of his arrest in August 2000 on suspicion of illegally importing stolen cars from Central America into Mexico, Cavallo was working for the Mexican National Vehicle Registry, a job he appears to have received as a special favor by the government of then President Ernesto Zedillo, despite questions about his background, including his involvement in a stolen car ring.

Immediately after he was arrested, Spanish authorities requested his extradition. A lower Mexican court ruled in 2001 that the extradition could take place. Cavallo appealed, and the Supreme Court in its recent ruling stressed that it wasn't deciding on his guilt or innocence but merely on the legality of Spain's extradition request.

In Belgium the government has recently insisted that it would maintain its own universal jurisdiction law that allows its courts to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity committed in any part of the world. US officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have been heavily pressuring Belgium to abandon this law. Rumsfeld has vowed to withhold the United State's share of money being used to finance construction of the new NATO headquarters as protest for Belgium's insistence on trying suspected human rights violators, including US citizens. Speaking in Brussels on June 12 Rumsfeld said, "By passing this law, Belgium has turned its legal system into a platform for divisive politicized lawsuits against her NATO allies."

Bowing to previous American pressure, Belgium has already modified the law once, to refer lawsuits to the courts in the defendant's own country if that country is considered to have an adequately functioning legal system. A lawsuit filed against the US military commander in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, was recently transferred to the United States (and then dismissed by the US judge). Other Americans who have had complaints lodged against them for human rights violations include George Bush Sr., Colin Powell, and Norman Schwarzkopf, all of whom are in the process of having their cases transferred to US courts.