under the jurisdiction of Baltasar Garzón as a judge. Francoist atrocities On 17 October 2008, Garzón formally declared the acts of repression committed by the Franco regime to be crimes against humanity, and accounted them in more than one hundred thousand killings during and after the Spanish Civil War. He also ordered the exhumation of 19 unmarked mass graves, one of them believed to contain the remains of the poet Federico García Lorca. On 17 November 2008, Garzón said that he was dropping the investigation against Franco and his allies after state prosecutors had questioned his jurisdiction over crimes committed 70 years ago by people who are now dead and whose crimes were covered by an amnesty passed in 1977. In a 152-page statement, he passed responsibility to regional courts for opening 19 mass graves believed to hold the remains of hundreds of victims. Caso Gürtel Garzón started a major corruption inquiry, code-named "Gürtel" from the name of its ringleader, Franscisco Correa, ("Gürtel" being German for "belt", which is the meaning of "correa" in Spanish). The case was related to bribes given to People's Party. He was disposed of the case in 2010. Allegation of improper eavesdropping The accused in the case sought to have evidence against them ignored. The accused asked that the evidence be ruled inadmissible, since it was obtained from conversations between prisoners and counsel, which, under Spanish law, it is claimed, is allowed only in terrorism-related cases. Garzón's authorisation of the recordings resulted in his disbarment as a judge and lawyer. International cases Augusto Pinochet On 10 October 1998, Garzón issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for the alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens. The Chilean Truth Commission (1990–91) report was the basis for the warrant, marking an unprecedented use of universal jurisdiction to attempt to try a former dictator for a crime committed abroad. Eventually it was turned down by British Home Secretary Jack Straw, who rejected Garzón's request to have Pinochet extradited to Spain on health grounds. Kissinger and Operation Condor Garzón asked for permission for cross-examination of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in connection with a plot in the 1970s known as Operation Condor. Permission was refused. Dirty War Garzón also filed charges of genocide against Argentine military officers on Dirty War's disappearance of Spanish citizens during Argentina's 1976–1983 dictatorship. Eventually, Adolfo Scilingo