A Spanish High Court judge known for indicting for indicting Osama bin Laden and Augusto Pinochet will face trial charged with abuse of power in a probe of Spanish civil war atrocities.

Spain''s High Court judge Judge Baltasar Garzon, a deeply polarizing figure, is accused of knowingly overstepping the bounds of his job in 2008 by investigating the atrocities.

Garzon, 54, denies any wrongdoing, telling journalists that he would "continue to defend my absolute innocence."

The ultimate decision on whether to charge and put Garzon on trial was up to an investigating magistrate at the Supreme Court. That judge, Luciano Varela, said in a ruling in February that Garzon consciously ignored an amnesty decreed by Parliament in 1977 for civil war-era crimes. Garzon, 54, appealed that ruling, denying any wrongdoing.

Garzon''s aborted probe centered on the killings of tens of thousands of civilians by supporters of Gen. Francisco Franco during the 1936-39 civil war and in the early years of his right-wing dictatorship.

It was the first official investigation into a still-divisive period of history, which had been taboo for many Spaniards. Garzon argued that Franco and his cohorts engaged in a crime against humanity, citing a systematic campaign by Franco to eliminate opponents, and said this had no statute of limitations.

His probe was seen as seeking a symbolic indictment of the regime. He declared himself to have jurisdiction and began his probe in the summer of 2008, ordering the Catholic church and government ministries to provide him with information on missing people. But he reluctantly bowed out a few months later in a dispute over jurisdiction, transferring the case to provincial courts.

Months later a far-right group called Manos Limpias, or Clean Hands, filed a complaint against Garzon for having launched the probe in the first place and the Supreme Court agreed to study it.

Symbol of universal jurisdiction

Garzon, who has prosecuted everything from Islamic extremists to member of the Basque leftist groups to Argentine "dirty war" suspects, is arguably one of Spain''s
most divisive figures and a man with a lot of political enemies.

He is a tireless hero to leftists and international human rights groups like Amnesty International, but a headline-loving egotist with a grudge against the right in the eyes of Spanish conservatives.

Over the past decade, he gained fame worldwide as the most prominent symbol of Spain''s doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which holds that heinous crimes like torture or terrorism can be tried in the country even if they had no link to Spain.

He used it in 1998 to go after Pinochet, having the former Chilean dictator arrested during a visit to London, although Britain ultimately refused to extradite him to Madrid. Garzon indicted bin Laden in 2003 over the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the U.S.

If Garzon is convicted of knowingly acting without jurisdiction, he can be suspended from the bench for 10 to 20 years.

Garzon is being investigated in two other cases as well: One involving money that Banco Santander donated to finance seminars Garzon organized while on sabbatical in New York City a few years ago, and over jailhouse wiretaps he ordered in a corruption probe that has tainted Spain''s conservative opposition party.