This article is more than 10 years old

This article is more than 10 years old

Spain's parliament approved a law narrowing the scope of a cross-border justice doctrine that had allowed judges to indict people such as Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden.

The existing legislation allowed judges such as Baltasar Garzón to prosecute serious crimes committed in other countries even if there was no link to Spain. The practice had irked some countries that had been targeted in investigations by Spanish magistrates, particularly Israel and China, and led to accusations that Spain was behaving like a global policeman.

Under the reformed version of the law, cases can now be undertaken only if the alleged crime involved Spanish victims or the alleged perpetrators are in Spain.

The bill was passed by the congress of deputies, or lower house, in June and then went to the senate, which made minor amendments.

The lower chamber approved the bill today . The 350-member chamber voted 319 in favour and five against, with three abstentions.

Spain's ruling Socialists and the opposition conservatives laid the groundwork for the law in May – a rare show of unity among two parties at each other's throats on just about everything else.

But the law is not retroactive, meaning the dozen or so cases currently being investigated will proceed. These include investigations into alleged Chinese abuses in Tibet, an Israeli air force attack in Gaza that killed 14 civilians, and alleged torture by the US of terror suspects at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

Garzón had Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, arrested in London in 1998 when he was 83 and tried to have him extradited to Madrid to face charges over torture and other abuses during his regime, from 1973 to 1990.

Britain put him under house arrest but ultimately declined to hand him over, citing Pinochet's poor health. Garzón indicted Bin Laden in 2003 over the September 11 2001 terror attacks in the United States.