Assembly/AU/ 14 (XI) Page 16 against the Guatemalan Mayan indigenous people and their supporters. cv The investigating judge accepted the complaint. 72. Upon appeal, the Spanish Supreme Court held by a very slim majority (8:7), in 2003, that Spanish national interests (a jurisdictional link) had to be affected and solely with regard to the crime of torture for Spanish courts to exercise jurisdiction in the matter. The Court found that the exercise of territorial and international criminal jurisdiction under the Genocide Convention 1948 was not exclusive; and any other criminal jurisdiction capable of being exercised is subsidiary to the provision of Convention. cvi The Majority noted that the Genocide Convention does not provide for universal jurisdiction, and argued that the Convention also does not prohibit it. cvii 73. The Majority of the Spanish Supreme Court took into consideration the decision of the International Court of Justice in the Arrest Warrant case,cviii although the International Court did not decide on universal jurisdiction. However, like in the Spanish Guatemalan Genocide case what was at stake was the sovereignty of another State. Article VIII of the Genocide Convention provides that a party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the United Nations Charter as may be appropriate for the prevention and suppression of the acts of genocide. The Majority argued that Article VIII rendered the jurisdiction of Spanish courts effective.cix This is not a provision for the exercise of universal jurisdiction by States, indeed the Convention contains no such provision. Furthermore, the judges in the Minority misinterpreted the decision of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom in the Pinochet case to the effect that under international law, crimes of jus cogens, including genocide, are punishable by any State. The Pinochet decision, as earlier stated, was based on the Convention against Torture, which Spain, Chile and the United Kingdom were all party to and had contractually agreed to the exercise of jurisdiction under the Convention. The effect of the designation of a norm as jus cogens, does not mean that it can confer a court with jurisdiction which it does not have under international law. 74. The Spanish Constitutional Court, in 2005, reversed the decision of the Supreme Court and held that Spain could investigate crimes of genocide, torture, murder and illegal imprisonment committed in Guatemala between 1978 and 1986 and that the principle of universal jurisdiction was not dependent on the existence, or otherwise, of national interests.cx The Constitutional Court was of the view that, 75. “The Convention’s silence on alternative jurisdictions beyond territorial and international tribunals cannot be read as an implicit limitation. Rather, Article VI of the Convention simply establishes the minimal obligations on States. The obligations to avoid impunity found in customary international law are incompatible with such a limited reading of the Convention and would, perversely, place more stringent limits on the actions of States parties to the Convention than those that applied to non-parties, which could rely on a universal jurisdiction founded in customary international law.” cxi 76. The Constitutional Court effectively re-instated the criminal complaints and in 2006, an international arrest warrant against those involved in the Guatemalan Genocide. 77. In another case, asserting universal jurisdiction by the Spanish courts, an Argentine naval officer, Adolfo Scilingo, was charged with torture, illegal detention and killing prisoners by throwing them out off air planes. cxii Scilingo was convicted and sentenced to 640 years imprisonment. cxiii