On the evening of October 16, 1998, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested at a medical clinic in London. This followed a 17-year reign of assassinations, disappearances, and torture—frequently tied to the infamous detention center at the heart of Santiago, Londres 38. Three decades earlier, on December 3, 1962, SS-Commander Walter Rauff was arrested in his home in Chile. As overseer of the infamous gas vans in World War II, he was indicted for the mass murder of tens of thousands of Jews and faced extradition to West Germany.
In his latest book, 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England, and a Nazi in Patagonia, Philippe Sands gives us a front row seat to the Pinochet trial—where he acted as a barrister for Human Rights Watch—and teases out the dictator’s unexpected connection to a leading Nazi who ended up managing a king crab cannery in Patagonia. A decade-long journey exposes the chilling truth behind the lives of two men and their intertwined destinies on 38 Londres Street.
Philippe Sands is a Professor of Law at University College London and a practicing barrister at Matrix Chambers. He is a frequent contributor to the Financial Times, Guardian, New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair. His books include Lawless World and The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive. He joined us in 2021 to discuss the latter book.
