I TOLD YOU that it was not over yet:

On Thursday, Spain's attorney general said Garzon should dismiss the complaint brought by human rights lawyers calling for the officials to be prosecuted.

In a ruling on Friday, Garzon ignored this advice but also avoided a direct confrontation with the attorney general's office by submitting the case to a lottery system which will now assign it at random to one of the six high court judges.

"Let it be assigned to the corresponding court," Garzon said in the ruling.

The judge who gets the case will now have to decide whether to go ahead of it. Under the system, Garzon will have a one in six chance of getting the case back.