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A Nazi in Chile: did an SS commander work for Pinochet?
00:49:01
Philippe Sands explores the connections between the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and an architect of the Holocaust who escaped to South America
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- [00:01]
Philippe Sands
Get out into the garden this spring with a subscription to BBC Gardeners World magazine. Subscribe today and you'll receive our 2 for 1 Gardens entry card and guide with your May issue. Visit gardenersworld.com subscribe welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. What connects a notorious Chilean dictator with an SS commander who played a key role in the Holocaust? This is the question at the heart of a new book by the author and lawyer Philippe Sands, which follows the twin stories of Augusto Pinochet's sensational arrest in London in 1998 and the post war career of Walter Ralph, who spent many years in Pinochet's Chile. For today's episode, Philippe was joined by Rob Attar to explore a tangled tale of law and mass murder in Europe and South America.
- [01:08]
Rob Attar
In 1998, Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London. How seismic a moment was this.
- [01:14]
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 watched the football results at 5:00 and news came on and they announced that former head of state of Chile Augusta Pinochet, visiting in London, had been arrested for murder and crimes against humanity and genocide. It was huge. It was the first time that a former head of state had been arrested on international crimes. And the timing was significant because just a few weeks earlier in Rome, countries had adopted the the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. So it was about as huge as it gets.
- [01:57]
Rob Attar
Someone listening, not familiar with the story might wonder why is this happening in London, not Santiago? So what can you tell us about the geography of this story?
- [02:05]
Philippe Sands
So by way of background, in September 1973, Augusto Pinochet, the head of the Chilean military, seized power in a coup d'etat and installed himself where he remained for 17 years. Over that period, hundreds of thousands of people were arrested, tens of thousands were tortured, disappeared, and many remain to this day about 1300 unaccounted for. That has attracted considerable interest around the world because these are actions that will be characterized as international crimes within the meaning of the 1945 Nuremberg trial and definitions. And they are coupled with a principle known as universal jurisdiction. Where certain crimes take place, the courts of any country in the world may exercise jurisdiction. And it happened that in 1998, in October, a Spanish judge named Balthazar Garzon decided to issue an arrest warrant for Senator Pinochet while he was in London receiving medical treatment for for international crimes. And that was in a sense the start of that part of the story.
- [03:18]
Rob Attar
And the connection with Spain is quite interesting, isn't it? Because Pinochet's relationship with the west was quite complex. He had a lot of friends in Western powers, particularly America and Britain.
- [03:28]
Philippe Sands
Well, Pinochet did indeed have friends on the political right in the United States and in Britain. And he was a good friend, for example, of Margaret Thatcher, who by the time he visited in October 1998, was no longer Prime Minister, but welcomed him. And in fact, shortly before he was arrested, they spent time together. Spain had long had an interest in the Pinochet saga because many Chilean refugees who fled his regime ended up in Spain. And indeed, as I describe in the book, it was the relations and descendants of some of his victims in Spain and who were Spanish, who went to the Spanish legal authorities and got the proceedings eventually up and running, making complaints. I think it's very important also to put this in its broader context. For many in Spain who had been opposed to General Franco, who was victorious in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, and who reigned until the mid-1970s when he died, there was a connection between Franco and Pinochet. And indeed, Pinochet was one of the very few international leaders to attend the funeral of General Franco. And so I think for many people in Spain, for or against Franco were also for or against. And there is a parallel in the relationship and the lives of the two men.
- [05:02]
Rob Attar
Then how did you yourself get to become involved in this case?
- [05:05]
Philippe Sands
Well, about two weeks after he was arrested, I just did what everyone else did, which was I just followed the news with great interest. I'm a teacher of international law. And so this was obviously fascinating. I think I did a few newspaper interviews and a couple of interviews for the BBC on the sort of unprecedented situation. And then I went off to Paris for a day, right at the end of the month of October to attend a ceremony at my grandfather's grave. He had recently died. And as I was leaving my hotel in Paris on that morning, 29th, 30th of October, whatever it was, I received a phone call from my barrister's chambers saying that Senator Pinochet's lawyers had been in touch and they would like to instruct me to be part of the team that would be arguing before the English courts that as a former head of state, he had complete immunity from the jurisdiction of the English courts, including in relation to international crime. So because I was off to the cemetery, I said, well, I'll need to call you back tomorrow once I'm back in London. I got to the cemetery and I there met my wife, who had come in separately. And you need to understand about my wife is that she has a Spanish mother and. And she is herself descended from refugees from the civil war in Spain. So these issues are sort of pertinent in her family and in my family. And I explained to her what had happened. And to be honest, I told her with some excitement that Pinochet's lawyers had been in touch. I might be involved in the case. And this was biggest international criminal case since Nuremberg. So that really was rather exciting. And she said to me, well, will you do it? And I said, well, you know the cab rank principle, the rule that requires barristers to take on every case that comes 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 the way they are or their politics. So, yes, I'm 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 to do it. She said, okay, well, you can do it if you want to do it, but if you do it, I will divorce you. And that, of course, was because of her own family background. And that was 27 years ago, and we are still very happily married. So I opted against divorce and against acting for Mr. Pinochet and thought that was the end of the matter. And then about four days later, the other side came along, Human Rights Watch, and said, we'd like to instruct you. And I acted for Human Rights Watch.
- [07:36]
Rob Attar
How then were you able. You talked about this cab right principle. How were you able to avoid having to represent Pinochet then?
- [07:42]
Philippe Sands
Well, the beauty of the English bar, and it has many fantastic aspects, is that for every rule, there are at least 37 exceptions. And one of the exceptions is known as the professional embarrassment exception. And about five days before my trip to Paris and being approached by Senator Pinochet's lawyers, I was asked to give an interview to the BBC World Service, actually by Zainabadawi. And she asked me a series of very well prepared questions. Had this happened before? And she raised questions about stories in the news that he was going to claim he was immune from the jurisdiction of the English courts as a former head of state. And she asked me, 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. So I frankly don't know what the English courts will do. It's untried, it's untested, it's a wholly new area. But she pushed Sayyid Badawi and pushed, and eventually she said to me, what do you think ought to happen? And I said, well, to be honest, 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. And 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. And then the case was taken in my stead by my very best friend in the world, James Cameron, causing, as I describe in the book, all sorts of mayhem in our friendship for several months. But we've managed to work it out, and we're still very good friends.
- [09:39]
Rob Attar
So, as you've alluded to there, the key issue in this case is not so much whether Pinochet was responsible for these crimes, but this idea of immunity. As in. As a former head of state, is he immune from prosecution?
- [09:49]
Philippe Sands
Essentially, in the English proceedings, which lasted in the end for nearly two years, there was no question of making a determination of whether he was or was not 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 to Spain. The only issue for the English courts, at least at that phase, was whether, as a former head of state, he could claim immunity. And that, as I've said, was a completely new situation. There was no precedent, there was no example of it having come up before. And so we were in untried and untested waters.
- [10:35]
Rob Attar
What was the view in Chile of what was going on here in London? He had lots of opponents in the country. Were they happy he was being prosecuted, or would they have rather it happened back home?
- [10:43]
Philippe Sands
I think the view in Chile was, as it was in many parts of the world, it was deeply divided. Pinochet continued to have many supporters in Chile, and he had supporters in Britain and in Spain, actually. And they were horrified that this was happening, and they were horrified about the circumstances in which he'd been arrested late at night in his hospital bed, central London, on Harley Street. But, of course, there were also many opponents of Pinochet in Chile, and they were completely thrilled. The entity that found itself in real difficulty was the government of Chile, which included many individuals who were opposed to him, but who found themselves, if you like, with a divided brief, whatever their personal views might be about the man and what he had done. As Chilean government ministers, they had a responsibility to protect the national interest of Chile. And so the issue for them was, what do we need to do to protect the well being of a former head of state of our country, even if we don't like many of the things that he did? And this was, I think, for many people personally, very complex and very difficult.
- [11:58]
Rob Attar
You yourself witnessed quite a few days in court and the House of Lords even. How unprecedented was it compared to other court days you've had?
- [12:06]
Philippe Sands
I was there every day. I didn't miss a single moment. As I describe in the book. It ended up being a very complex procedure. There were in fact, three separate proceedings before the House of Lords that we probably don't have time to get into why it happened in that way. But it went on endlessly, starting in November and finishing in March 1999. 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, with observers, with journalists, with 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 when the rules of law were changing. And so each day, in a sense, was electric. Even though much of the legal procedure is quite mundane, quite dull, quite 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. I'm often asked about the greatest experience of my professional life, and it will have been sitting in the House of Lords over those extended periods.
- [13:30]
Rob Attar
Many people will be aware that you've written previously the book East west street, which looks a lot about what happened to people after 1945 and the concept of genocide and the Nuremberg Trials. Can you see many connections between what happened after World War II and what happened with Pinochet?
- [13:44]
Philippe Sands
The two stories are deeply connected. Although I have to say, when I started writing what became East West street in 2010, I was not aware of the connections and I certainly didn't expect to be off on a path that would end up writing what is, in effect, a trilogy, East west street, the Ratline and 38 Laundress Street. But people forget that Augusta Pinochet was originally indicted by a Spanish judge, Balthazar Garzon, for crimes against humanity and genocide. And East West Street's subtitle is on the Origins of Crimes against Humanity and Genocide. So, In a way, 50 years after the events I describe in East west street, you now have a sort of coming of age of these two concepts and their real actionability, not at the international level, not before an international tribunal, but in the heart of London and before a national court. So the connections are very, very intimate. And in writing the book, I came across that very often. In fact, the Spanish jurist who started the whole story was not Baltasar Garzon. It was a public prosecutor called Carlos Castrosana. And when I went to interview him the first time, he said to me in his work on crimes in Argentina and in Chile, his greatest inspiration was, was the Nuremberg trial. And in fact, in our interview, he told me that he was happy to speak with me because he had read East west street and it had inspired him and reminded him of the origins of his work on the Pinochet case. So these stories are indeed very interconnected, although I think we weren't fully aware of that. I certainly wasn't aware of that in 1998.
- [15:31]
Rob Attar
And then you make the connection much more explicit in the book with the other chief protagonist, if that's the right word, which is Volta Ralph, who you write about, who was a key architect of the Nazi state, who then ends up in Chile, and then you seek the connections with the Pinochet regime. I wonder if you could just quickly, for our listeners, introduce Walther Ralph and explain what his role was in the Third Reich.
- [15:52]
Philippe Sands
Sure. So 38 Laundress Streets tells two stories in parallel, which is always difficult. I've been involved in the Pinochet case from 1998 to 2000. And then about 15 years passed. East West street came out in 2016, and by then I'd started work on a second book connected to East west street, which would be called the Ratline. The main protagonist in the Ratline is a man called Otto Wachter, who was a senior Nazi who was responsible for mass murder in occupied Poland, including the city of Lviv, where my grandfather was from. And he had a role in the elimination of my grandfather's entire family. So I was doing some archival research on Otto Wachter, actually, with the support of his son, Horst Wachter, and in the family archive, which Horst very generously allowed me access to, I came across a letter written in May 1949 to Otto Wechter from someone living in Damascus Syria. And the writer of the letter was a man called Walter Ralph, whose name was vaguely familiar to me, but I wasn't exactly sure why. And in the letter, Ralph was writing to Wachter to explain to him that he should not do what Ralph had done, which was to flee to the Arab world, but instead to head to South America. And Ralph indicates in the letter that's what he intended to to do himself. I started doing some research on who is this Walter Rauff? We're now about 2015, 2016. And I quickly learned that Walter Ralph is the man who operated, invented, ran the mobile gas fans that were used in 1941 and 1942 in Nazi occupied Europe to eliminate groups of up to 50 people killing with gas by locking them in the back of a van and gassing them to death. And that he had been hunted after the war for mass murder, but had escaped and had disappeared. And so I carried on reading about Ralph and learned very quickly that he had ended up in Chile, living in the town in the world that is the most southerly, namely Punta Arenas, a remarkable place that I visited now many times. And the idea came in the back of my head, could there be a connection between Walter Ralph and Augusto Pinochet? And that became the seed of the book. Essentially, it's a journey, as I try to understand whether there is a connection between the story of Walter Ralph, who escapes to Chile, and Augusto Pinochet, who is getting medical treatment in London.
- [18:47]
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- [19:19]
Rob Attar
So Valterraut, as you say, goes to Chile, and then it's not a secret he's there. Lots of people know he's there. So how does he never face justice for the appalling crimes that he did in the Third Reich before he'd done anything in Chile.
- [19:34]
Philippe Sands
So he ends up in Punta arenas in about 1958, and he becomes the manager of a king crab cannery and, you know, processing crab meat for export to Europeans. Then in December 1962, the West Germans finally catch up with him and they issue an arrest Warrant, very similar to the Pinochet arrest warrant. And they indict him for mass murder and send a request for his extradition from Chile to West Germany. He's arrested, he's taken from Puntarenas to Santiago, and in Santiago he is 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 from Chile to West Germany. The issue was something called the statute of limitations. Chile had a 15 year period. In other words, you can't extradite someone or prosecute someone if more than 15 years has passed since the alleged crime was committed. In this case, the crimes with the gas vans took place in 41 and 42, and we were now in 1962 and 63. So 20 plus years have passed, more than 15 years. And the Chilean Supreme Court ruled by six votes to one in 1963 that he could not be extradited. And so he goes back to Punta Arenas and resumes his life as the manager of a king crab cannery. And justice is never done. A first case of impunity.
- [21:19]
Rob Attar
And he also remains fairly unrepentant, doesn't he? I mean, he may seek to minimise his role, but he doesn't really ever apologise for it.
- [21:25]
Philippe Sands
So I've spent 10 years researching this book. I've met dozens and dozens of people who knew him. I've got his personal correspondence. There have been books and articles written about him. He was an unrepentant racist, homophobe, anti Semite throughout his entire life and to the end of his days, he each year celebrated the birthday of Adolf Hitler and longed for a return to the good old days. So I think, yes, I think we can conclude he was not a delightful individual with the kinds of views and values we can celebrate. On the other hand, I've also come to know his grandchildren who describe a decent and loving grandfather. I think his relationship with his own children was much more difficult. He was, as the grandchild I know best, described to me virulently anti communist, totally opposed to the presidency of Salvador Allende, who Pinochet had overthrown and thrilled and delighted by the seizure of power by Augusto Pinochet in September 1973. So that gives you, I think, a sense of who Walter Rauff was. He was the most famous Nazi living in Chile. And after the proceedings in Santiago in early 1963, when he returned to Punta Arenas, where he had lived until that point, in relative anonymity and obscurity Everyone knew who he was, and that did not stop many of them from taking him to their breasts and showing friendships. In fact, I've met some of the people, his employees in that period. They describe a stern, unbending individual who treated his workers well and with respect, but he was prone to rages and fury and strongly held political views.
- [23:37]
Rob Attar
Now, as we've talked about before, the central question of this part of the book is to what extent do does Ralph become involved in the repressive apparatus of the Pinochet regime? I won't give that away now, because that would be a bit of a spoiler for potential readers, but I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what this repressive apparatus was, which is obviously centred then on 38 Laundress Street.
- [23:57]
Philippe Sands
So Pinochet takes power on 11 September 1973, and soon after that, he creates a secret intelligence services called the DINA, the Direcion d'Intelligentsia Nacional D I N A. And the DINA is authorised basically to do anything necessary to take out opponents of the regime, including to kill or to disappear them. And the dina, with Pinochet's direct authorization, run by a man called Manuel Contreras, establishes a series of detention centers and torture centers and places of disappearance. And these are not only in obscure places, many of them are in downtown Santiago. And in fact, the one that becomes most central in this book is the place that gives the book its title, 38 Landres St. Calle Londres, or Londres street, is a small street in central Santiago. And number 38 was the headquarters of the Socialist Party. So Allende's political outfit, Pinochet's opponent, Pinochet, takes over the ownership of that building. The Dina operates it, and in early 1974, it becomes one of the major torture centers in Chile and in Santiago. And it is a central place in relation to Pinochet's apparatus. And without giving too much away, the events there, the holding of certain detainees there, and what certain detainees saw or heard, became an absolutely crucial part of the story in relation to whether Walter Ralph had any role in all of this. I mean, without giving anything away, it's very interesting. When I started going to Chile and asking around about Walter Ralph, many, many people were familiar with his name. Many people knew that he was an old Nazi, that he'd moved from Germany to Chile, that he lived in Punta Arenas, that he ran a king crab cannery. And part of the reason for that is that Ralph had become a figure of significant Chilean literature. So for example, the great Chilean writer Roberto Bolano, in two of his novels, features a character based on Walter Ralph. Most significantly, a novel called Knights in Chile. Walter Ralph, or Walter Raif as he's renamed, becomes the manager of a king crab canary who becomes a central advisor to Augusto Pinochet. Now, that novel was published in the 1990s and was not based on evidence or material that proved a link between Ralph and Pinochet, but rather based on allegations and rumours and hearsay. But I've taken many taxi journeys in Santiago where if I'll ask the taxi driver, have you ever heard of Walter Ralph? They'll say yes, and then they'll just start saying yes. Of course, he worked with Pinochet after 1973. And what I was interested in was not the rumours and the allegations, maybe because I'm a barrister, but actual evidence. I wanted to find hard evidence to disprove or not that allegation. Was it true? I mean, I'm used to appearing in court. I can't just stand up and say, oh, yes, Mr. Ralph worked for Mr. Pinochet. The judge will say to me, well, can you prove it, Mr. Sands? And I can prove it how? Either by documentary evidence that is contemporaneous, or by testamentary evidence, witness statements. And one of the things that happened in Chile, which learnt from the Germans, was that when the political situation began to change in the late 1970s, the Diener who run by Manuel Contreras, destroyed the entire filing system of the dina. And so very few documents existed or were believed to exist in relation to the crimes of the Pinochet regime. And I went into this research knowing it was very unlikely I'd find any documents with Ralph's name on it. And that meant what I had to do was I had to go and find people who may have had a connection with Ralph or with others working with Pinochet. So it was an immensely time consuming exercise. But I've got to say, one of those fascinating things I've ever been privileged to do. It was an extraordinary chance, really.
- [28:54]
Rob Attar
And for me, actually, really one of, I think the most fascinating parts of this travelogue part of the book is when you visit this German colony in Chile and you can really sense your revulsion, your hatred almost of being there. What was it like to visit this place?
- [29:08]
Philippe Sands
So this is a place that people can watch if they have access to Netflix. There's a six part series, I think it's called the Colony or the Sect. The place is called Colonia Dignitad. It's about three hours south of Santiago. It's in a very rural area. It's a huge agricultural settlement. It was acquired in the early 1960s by a West German preacher, evangelist and paedophile called Paul Schaeffer, who essentially set up the colony as a Christian sect in which terrible things were done to small boys. A secret camp. And there were many allegations and rumors that former Nazis and DINA members and Pinochetistas were associated with colony Dignitat. So, you know, my research style is very hands on. There's a lot you can do on the Internet. There's a lot you can do watching movies and reading books. But there is no substitute for going to see a place. And so I went off with my fantastic Chilean assistant, Montserrat Matiliaga, and I said to her, we've sorry, but we've got to go. She really didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. And we ended up spending two days there. I mean, it really beggars belief. It was a torture center. It was a place of mass murder. It was a place of industrial scale paedophilia. And now it operates in the same buildings as a holiday resort. So the hotel in which I stayed was a place of abuse for young children. I mean, you can't even begin to describe the sentiment of staying in a hotel room, which, you know, has probably been used for the most appalling practices. I slept, I remember, with a chair wedged against the door, incredibly uncomfortable. We were shown around by many of the former child victims, now men in their 40s, 50s and 60s, who described to us in graphic horror what had happened to them. We were shown torture centers. We were shown places where bodies were disposed of. And many people confirmed that this was where Pinochet's teams had done a lot of their misdeeds and acts of torture. It's still open today. There's a restaurant, there's a hotel, there's a swimming pool, there's a museum. Very little is said of the past horrors. It is possibly the most unsettling and appalling place I've ever been to.
- [31:55]
Rob Attar
And just to be clear, it's not still being run by the same people who were running it back in the 70s.
- [32:00]
Philippe Sands
It's being run by the descendants of the same people who run it. You can't even begin to imagine the feelings of a lot of people won't go there. I think the current government of Chile has indicated that it is going to close down the entire place. But it's complicated because the residents who still live there, who are many cases, men who as small boys were abused by Paul Schaeffer and others, have nowhere else to go. And so their entire sense of home and well being is connected to this place of horror. And at a humane level, sure, one would want to shut the place down, raze it to the ground, throw them all out, but actually that's going to produce yet another trauma. So what strikes me as amazing is that there has been still no proper plan about what to do with this really utterly appalling place.
- [33:03]
Rob Attar
Now, coming back to the central question of the book about whether Ralph was or was not integral to the repression in the Pinochet regime. Why for you was it so important to get to the truth of this?
- [33:17]
Philippe Sands
That's a great question, Rob. Maybe because I'm an obsessive. I mean, years ago people wanted me to stop talking about Ralph and they were just sick to death of it. And I think it's that litigator's instinct. You know, you have a sort of sixth sense that there is something there and you want to get to it and you can't let go and you leave no stone unturned in wanting to get to the truth. And as you know from reading the book, and I don't want to go into the details, in the end, it's by some accidental discoveries and connections that doors begin to open in which you end up in a place where your instincts are addressed, but in a way that is so awful you can't even begin to imagine that it is possible what you have stumbled across. And I simply had an instinct that there was something there. You know, there's the expression, there's no smoke without fire. 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. And in the end I did. But it was immensely time consuming. It was a fascinating journey. And when the truth emerged or the realities emerged, the facts emerged, they emerged rather more quickly finally than I would have imagined. But the lesson I take away from it, it's one that I rely on in court, is to trust my instincts. If you really sense there's something there, you've just got to keep going. And in this case, my first interview with the book, which was with Baltazar Garzon, the Spanish judge, was in 2015, we're now 2025, and the book is just about to come out. So it was a 10 year exercise of investigation, but of Course, there was a double investigation. I was looking not only for the question of had there been a connection between Ralph and Pinochet, but I was 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 proceedings in Pinochet 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. But again, the instinct was that some sort of a deal had been done to get him back. But there was no evidence of any deal. There was no proof of any deal. And so, essentially, I want a double investigative path. Was there a deal to get Pinochet home? Did Pinochet work with Ralph? And that double story reaches a climax only right at the end of the book.
- [36:27]
Rob Attar
And actually, as an aside, there was one detail I thought was really fascinating. On Pinochet's return back to Chile, he receives a gift from Margaret Thatcher. Would you be able to tell the listeners about that? Because I thought that was such an interesting detail.
- [36:38]
Philippe Sands
One of the things probably you and I are bonded by is we love tiny points of detail. And I've come to learn from my books that readers are very intelligent and they're very attentive to tiny details. But Pinochet's main lawyer in London, Mr. Kaplan, was summoned to meet Lady Thatcher just before Pinochet returned home to Spain. And Mrs. Thatcher said she wanted to give him a gift. And it was a large gift, and he carried it to the airport in Lincolnshire where the plane was flying away from, got on the plane and personally was told to hand it to Senator Benjet. It was a platter which depicted, as I recall, the British defeat of the Spanish armada back in 1588 or thereabouts. And there was a certain humour, I think, in Mrs. Thatcher's sense, of what the gift ought to be. But gifts given to and by Senator Pinochet become a pretty central part of the story. And as you know, across the way, I met some extraordinary characters to really unpick what had actually happened. My very favourite character in the whole book is a very remarkable lady called Jean Pateris, who was chosen to be the interpreter for Scotland Yard, basically from the moment just before he was going to be arrested. And I've come to know her over the last few years, and she has not only a fantastic memory, but a fantastic way of telling stories. And her account of being the person who went into his hospital room and explained to him as he lay in his hospital bed that he was being arrested for murder and genocide and crimes against humanity is completely unforgettable. I mean, one of the things when you spend 10 years writing a book or when you spend two years litigating a case, is you get to know people well. And that's the case with Jean Pateris, but another central character. And I think you'll have picked up this started, really my writing of East west street is I'm not only hanging out with people who I'm in complete agreement with on some big issues. I mean, there's Horst Wachter's son, who still believes his father was a fantastic man. But during the proceedings before the House of Lords, I sat in Committee Room 4 and my next door neighbour was this sort of largish gentleman called Miguel, who turned out to be Augusto Pinochet's principal lawyer. And obviously, as the case was going on, we were on directly opposite sides. And I think the relationship was, you know, courteous but frosty. But we stayed in touch and over the next 20 years we became friends. And right at the end of his life, he opened up to me on what had happened behind the scenes on the Pinochet case. And that was a great privilege. And I've benefited hugely from his generosity and his trust in sharing his side of the story, which is the Pinochet side of the story.
- [39:54]
Rob Attar
There are two words that come through a lot in your book, which are immunity and impunity. How far do you think the stories of Pinochet and Ralph illuminate those two concepts?
- [40:04]
Philippe Sands
I think the concepts of immunity and impunity are very significant for our times. Actually. Immunity connotes a sort of freedom from being subjected to. To criminal or legal process or prosecution, and impunity connotes a total absence of justice. And I think in the case of Walter Ralph, who was involved in mass murder and in the end was never held to account for what he did, the case of impunity reigns absolutely. I think the case of Auguste Pinochet is more complex in relation to impunity. He did not succeed in his claim to immunity. And so the proceedings went on. But for reasons that I describe in the book, he was essentially allowed to leave the United Kingdom and go back to Santiago early. He never was sent to Spain. And when he got back to Chile, 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 remains today a very painful fact. So these issues are particularly significant in our times. As you know right now, recently in the United States, the Supreme Court of the US has determined that a president of the United States has absolute immunity from legal process and that that immunity continues beyond his term of office to the time where he is a former president in relation to acts that were carried out whilst he was head of state. So under that theory, which adopted a different approach to the House of Lords in deciding that Pinochet was not entitled to immunity as a former head of state, a president who commits genocide or crimes against humanity or torture or disappears people, so long as it is a presidential act, will be immune from the jurisdiction of the American criminal courts. And that leads, in my view, to a situation of total impunity. The connecting theme between the Pinochet case and the recent judgment of the U.S. supreme Court, and it was a central issue in the Pinochet case, is can a president ever carry out an act of torture or disappearance or criminality, crime against humanity as part of their presidential functions and the House of Lords membership? The judges divided on that issue. Some said, no, you can never commit that kind of illegal act. That is never an act of your office, an act of state. But others disagreed. And the US Supreme Court is essentially going down the route of saying that if you act as president to disappear someone or torture someone, you will have immunity in relation to that act. And I have to say that is, for me, extremely problematic.
- [43:36]
That was Philippe Sands, 38 Laundress street on impunity. Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia is out now. And we also spoke to Philippe on the podcast about his earlier book, the Rat Line. You can find a link. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden.