"If you represent Pinochet in this case, I will divorce you”: the sensational trial of the Chilean dictator

Philippe Sands tells Rob Attar about his involvement in the sensational trial of the Chilean dictator, and how it connects to a Nazi on the run

Published: May 27, 2025 at 9:00 AM

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Rob Attar: In 1998, the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in London. How seismic a moment was this?

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Philippe Sands: I remember the moment of learning of Pinochet’s arrest. It was a Saturday afternoon. It happened to be my birthday, and I was settling down to watch the football results at five o’clock when the news came on and they announced that Augusto Pinochet had been arrested for murder and crimes against humanity. It was huge. It was the first time that a former head of state, while travelling abroad, had been arrested on international crimes.

Someone not familiar with the story might wonder why this was happening in London, not Santiago. What can you tell us about the geography of these events?

By way of background, in September 1973 Augusto Pinochet, head of the Chilean military, seized power in a coup d’etat and remained there for 17 years. Over that period, hundreds of thousands were arrested, tens of thousands were tortured and ‘disappeared’, and many remain so to this day. There are about 1,300 people unaccounted for.

This had attracted considerable interest around the world, because these are actions that would be characterised as international crimes within the meaning of the 1945 Nuremberg trials and definitions. And that is coupled with a principle known as universal jurisdiction, where when certain crimes take place, the courts of any country in the world may exercise jurisdiction. In October 1998 a Spanish judge named Baltasar Garzón decided to issue an arrest warrant for Senator Pinochet, while he was in London receiving medical treatment, for international crimes. That was the start of this part of the story.

The connection with Spain is interesting because Pinochet’s relationship with the west was quite complex. He had a lot of friends in western countries, particularly America and Britain, for example.

Pinochet did indeed have friends, on the political right, in the United States and in Britain. He was a good friend of Margaret Thatcher, and, in fact, shortly before he was arrested, they spent time together. Spain had also long had an interest in him, because many Chilean refugees who had fled his regime ended up in Spain, and indeed it was the relations and descendants of some of his victims in Spain who went to the legal authorities and got the proceedings up and running.

To put this in its broader context, for people in Spain who had been opposed to General Franco, there was a connection between Franco and Pinochet. And, in fact, Pinochet was one of the very few international leaders to attend Franco’s funeral. For many people in Spain, if you were for or against Franco, you were also for or against Pinochet.

3 men in uniforms, two wearing sunglasses. They are all saluting. Alongside them, a soldier plays a large drum

Pinochet (centre) pictured in Santiago in September 1973 shortly after seizing power in a military coup. Over the following 17 years, his regime would torture and ‘disappear’ tens of thousands of Chileans (Image by Getty Images)

How did you become involved in this case?

After Pinochet was arrested, I did what everyone else did, which was to follow the news with great interest. I am a teacher of international law, so this was fascinating for me. I did a few newspaper interviews and a couple for the BBC, and then I went off to Paris for a day to attend a ceremony at the grave of my grandfather, who had recently died.

As I was leaving my hotel, I received a phone call from my barristers’ chambers saying that Senator Pinochet’s lawyers had been in touch, and that they would like to instruct me to be part of the team arguing that, as a former head of state, he had complete immunity from the jurisdiction of the English courts – including in relation to international crime. Because I was off to the cemetery, I said: “I need to call you back tomorrow once I’m back in London.”

I got to the cemetery and there met my wife who had come in separately. She has a Spanish mother and is descended from refugees from the civil war in Spain. So these issues are pertinent in her family. I explained to her what had happened. To be honest, I told her with some excitement that Pinochet’s lawyers had been in touch and that I might be involved in the case. This was the biggest international criminal case since Nuremberg and that really was rather exciting. And she asked me: “Will you do it?”

I said: “Well, you know the cab rank principle: the rule that requires barristers to take on every case that comes in, just as though you’re a taxi driver. You can’t say no to someone because you don’t like the cut of their jib or their politics. So, yes, I am going to do it.” And she looked at me again and said: “So will you do it?” And I said: “Yes, I’ve got no option but to do it.” She said: “Okay, well, you can if you want to. But if you do it, I will divorce you.” And that, of course, was because of her own family background.

This was 25 years ago, and we are still very happily married. So I opted against divorce and against acting for Pinochet, and thought that that was the end of the matter. But then, about four days later, the other side came along, Human Rights Watch, and said we would like to instruct you, and I acted for them as counsel.

How were you able to avoid representing Pinochet, considering that cab rank principle?

The beauty of the English Bar is that for every rule there are at least 37 exceptions. And one of them is known as the professional embarrassment exception. About five days before my trip to Paris I was asked to give an interview to Zeinab Badawi for the BBC World Service, and she asked me a series of very well-prepared questions. One of them was: has he got a right to immunity? And I said: “We don’t know because this has never happened before. We’ve never had a case in which a former head of state has turned up in another country and been subjected to the jurisdiction of that country’s courts. Frankly I don’t know what the English courts will do.”

But she pushed and asked me: “What do you think ought to happen?” And I said: “I can quite see why you would have immunity for a serving head of state, but I can’t really see the logic for a former head of state. So, no, in my view, there should not be an entitlement to immunity.” Those words, publicly stated, meant that I would effectively have been arguing for Senator Pinochet in the context of having made a public statement that he should not have immunity. And on that basis, I was able to decline to accept instructions.

So, was the key issue here not so much whether Pinochet was responsible for these crimes, but whether as a former head of state he was immune from prosecution?

In the English proceedings, which lasted for about 18 months, there was no question of making a determination as to whether he was responsible for any of the alleged acts or crimes. That was always going to be a matter for the courts of Spain, if he was extradited. The only issue for the English courts was whether, as a former head of state, he could claim immunity. And that was a completely new situation. We were in untried and untested waters.

What were your experiences of being in court for this case? How different was it from other trials you’ve witnessed?

I was there every day; I didn’t miss a single moment. It ended up being very complex, with three separate proceedings before the House of Lords. And it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and nothing I have experienced since. Everyone who was in the room – which was packed with lawyers, observers, journalists and interested bystanders – understood that this was something of huge significance because it would set a precedent at a time when the world was changing and the rules of law were changing.

Each day was electric, even though much of the legal procedure was quite mundane, dull and technical. The fact that people were so divided in the room, the fact that the stakes were so high, and
the fact that the arguments were so novel made it unique in my professional experience.

The second key character in your book is Walter Rauff, an important figure in the Nazi state who later ended up in Chile. What can you tell us about him?

38 Londres Street tells two stories in parallel. I’d been involved in the Pinochet case from 1998 to 2000, and about 15 years later I started working on a book called The Ratline, where the main protagonist is a man called Otto Wächter, a senior Nazi who was responsible for mass murder in occupied Poland, including the city of Lviv, where my grandfather was from. He’d had a role in the elimination of my grandfather’s entire family. I was doing some archival research and came across a letter written in May 1949 to Wächter from someone living in Damascus, Syria. And the writer of the letter was Walter Rauff, whose name was vaguely familiar to me, but I wasn’t sure why.

I started doing some research and quickly learned that Walter Rauff was the man who operated, invented and ran the mobile gas vans that were used in 1941 and 1942 in Nazi-occupied Europe to eliminate groups of up to 50 people at a time, by locking them in the back of a van and gassing them to death. He had been hunted after the war for mass murder, but had escaped and disappeared. I carried on reading and learned that Rauff had ended up in Chile, living in one of the most southerly towns in the world: Punta Arenas.

And the idea arrived in the back of my head: could there be a connection between Walter Rauff and Augusto Pinochet? That became the seed of this book.

A black and white image of two men in military uniform. The person in the foreground where's a cap with two cords across the front

Walter Rauff pictured during his arrest in 1945. He later escaped from Allied custody and was living in Chile when Pinochet came to power (Image by Alamy)

It wasn’t a secret that Rauff had moved to Chile after the war, so why was he never brought to justice for his role in the Holocaust?

Rauff ended up in Punta Arenas in about 1958, and became the manager of a king crab cannery, processing crab meat for export to Europeans. Then, in December 1962, the West Germans finally caught up with him and they issued an arrest warrant, indicting him for mass murder and sending a request for his extradition from Chile. He was arrested and taken to Santiago where he was subjected to legal proceedings. The issue in his case was not immunity from jurisdiction of the Chilean courts, but whether the Chilean courts had the right to extradite him to West Germany.

In Chile there was a 15-year statute of limitations. In other words, you can’t extradite or prosecute someone if more than 15 years has passed since the alleged crime was committed. In this case, more than 15 years had passed, and the Chilean Supreme Court ruled by six votes to one in 1963 that he could not be extradited. So Rauff went back to Punta Arenas and resumed his life as the manager of a king crab cannery.

And all this time he remained unrepentant?

He was an unrepentant, racist, homophobic antisemite throughout his entire life. To the end of his days, he celebrated the birthday of Adolf Hitler and longed for a return to the good old days. So I think we can conclude he was not a delightful individual with the kind of values and views we can celebrate. On the other hand, I’ve come to know his grandchildren, who describe a decent and loving grandfather.

He was the most famous Nazi living in Chile, and after the proceedings in Santiago, when he returned to Punta Arenas, everyone knew who he was, and that did not stop many of them from taking him to their breasts and showing friendship. I’ve met some of the people he employed in that period. They describe a stern, unbending individual who treated his workers well and with respect, but was prone to rages and fury and had strongly held political views.

Walter Rauff was an unrepentant, racist, homophobic antisemite. To the end of his days, he celebrated the birthday of Adolf Hitler

A central question of your book is whether Rauff became involved in the repressive apparatus of the Pinochet regime. I won’t ask you to give away your conclusion, but could you tell us about the kinds of things that took place at the time?

The year after Pinochet took power, he created a secret intelligence service called the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA). And the DINA was authorised to do anything necessary to take out opponents of the regime, including to kill or to disappear them. The DINA established a series of detention centres and torture centres and places of disappearance. These were not only in obscure places; many of them were in downtown Santiago. And in fact, the one that gives the book its title is in a small street in central Santiago. Number 38 was the former headquarters of the Socialist Party.

It is a central place in relation to Pinochet’s apparatus, and, without giving too much away, the events there and what certain detainees saw or heard became an absolutely crucial part of the story in relation to whether Walter Rauff had any role in all of this.

Why was it so important for you to establish whether Rauff was involved in Pinochet’s repressions?

Maybe because I’m an obsessive. In my own household, years ago, people wanted me to stop talking about Rauff because they were sick to death of it. But I think it’s that litigator’s instinct: you have a sort of sixth sense that there is something there and you can’t let go. You leave no stone unturned in wanting to get to the truth.

There’s the expression ‘there’s no smoke without fire’, and there was too much smoke. There were too many people who said to me: “I saw him”, or “I heard him”, or “I heard word of him”, and I needed to get to the heart of those claims. In the end I did, but it was immensely time-consuming.

My first interview for the book, which was with Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge, was in 2015. We’re now in 2025 and the book is just about to come out. So it was a 10-year investigation. And it was a double investigation. I was looking not only at the question of whether there had been a connection between Rauff and Pinochet, but also looking for the answer to another question: how did Pinochet end up back in Chile?

Because, coming back to the earlier part of our conversation, the Pinochet case lasted a very long time before the English courts. And in the end, things took a strange turn. There were allegations that the old man had fallen ill. He couldn’t face trial and he must go home. My instinct was that some sort of a deal had been done to get him back, but there was no evidence of any deal. And so essentially I went on a double investigative path. Was there a deal to get Pinochet home? Did Pinochet work with Rauff? And that double story reaches a climax only right at the end of the book.

There are two words that come through a lot in your book: ‘immunity’ and ‘impunity’. How far do the stories of Pinochet and Rauff illuminate those concepts?

The concepts of immunity and impunity are very significant for our times. Immunity connotes a sort of freedom from being subjected to criminal or legal process or prosecution. And impunity connotes a total absence of justice. And I think in the case of Walter Rauff, who was involved in mass murder and never held to account, the case of impunity reigns absolutely.

The case of Augusto Pinochet is more complex. He did not succeed in his claim to immunity and so the proceedings went on. But, for reasons I describe in the book, he was eventually allowed to leave the United Kingdom and go back to Santiago early. He never was sent to Spain, though the idea was that he would face justice in Chile, and to a certain extent he did. At the time of his death in 2006 he was indicted, he was under house arrest, his reputation was in tatters. So that is not an example of total impunity. But he was never convicted of a crime – and, for many, that still remains a very painful fact.

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This article was first published in the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

Authors

Rob AttarHead of content and editor of HistoryExtra magazine

Rob Attar is head of content and editor of HistoryExtra magazine

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