MADRID Spain's most popular and controversial magistrate, Baltasar Garzon, is to be tried for allegedly abusing his powers by investigating the disappearance of tens of thousands of people murdered under the Franco dictatorship.

Garzon, who had the Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet arrested in London in 1998, is expected to be suspended from his job as a magistrate in the country's national court while the trial proceeds.

A supreme court magistrate, Luciano Varela, has ordered Garzon to stand trial on allegations made by a far-right lobby group and the extreme right fringe party Falange Espanola.

The private prosecution claims he deliberately and knowingly overstepped his powers by investigating the fate of 113,000 people who disappeared during and after the civil war sparked by a rightwing military rising in 1936.

General Francisco Franco's nationalists eventually overthrew the republican government after a bloody three-year war. He remained dictator until his death in 1975.

Varela argued in a 14-page ruling that Garzon started his inquiry despite being “aware of his lack of jurisdiction” under a 1977 amnesty for Francoist crimes.

Garzon, 54, has argued the amnesty does not apply because an ongoing crime of kidnapping exists where no body has been found. The magistrate named the Falange, which backed Franco, as responsible for many of the disappearances.

Garzon later passed the investigation down to lower courts. He has been hailed as a hero by the families of victims who have begun to dig up the mass graves left behind by Franco's death squads.

The British human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC has declared his support for a judge who has earned a global reputation for his use of international human rights law against the former military regimes that ruled parts of South America.

“It is ironic that one of Spain's few internationally renowned jurists - as well as an incredibly brave investigating judge who has risked his life with the mafia, with Basque group Eta and with Al Qaida - is now having his reputation put at risk,” Robertson said.

“This is a trial of the integrity of Spain's judges and of the reputation of Spanish jurists who will, if they find for the prosecution, be held in universal contempt by international lawyers.”

Robertson said that Garzon had been correct in international law in deciding to investigate crimes allegedly committed by 34 senior Francoist officials, all of whom are dead.

“His ruling that there can be no posthumous impunity for crimes against humanity is important to all descendants of the victims of such crimes worldwide, whether they be from the Armenian genocide or the Nazi holocaust,” Robertson said. “As a matter of international criminal law he was undoubtedly right.”

Emilio Silva, the head of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, which represents victims of Franco's regime, said “This is a sad day for justice.”

Garzon denies wrongdoing and has said he will clear his name. If found guilty he could be removed from the bench for 12 to 20 years - effectively ending his career as a judge.

He has built up a reputation at home for taking on political corruption, mafia networks and both domestic and international terrorism.

Garzon's suspension from the national court in Madrid is expected to come within days and will prevent him pursuing several high profile cases.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service