Chile’s capital, Santiago, is almost directly west of Pretoria, and for about 20 years after a 1973 military coup, the two countries mirrored one another in aspects of repression and the subjugation of human rights. The ideologies underpinning the two regimes’ policies — anticommunism and white paramountcy, respectively — were different, but abominable programmes of torture, extrajudicial killings and disappearances were common to Gen August Pinochet’s junta and successive National Party governments in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.
SA readers of international lawyer Philippe Sands’ latest book, 38 Londres Street, will discern, too, the similar, painfully slow-turning wheels of justice, and be dismayed by the impunity of top echelon leaders. Despite truth and reconciliation processes and reports in both countries, discovering full truths and holding most perpetrators to account are elusive tasks, if not, after 30-50 years, now almost impossible.
But Sands specialises in shedding light on crimes covered up by negligent histories. Among his previous books are The Last Colony, a sordid story of how Britain stole the Chagos Islands in defiance of international law, and The Ratline, which revealed how senior Nazi leaders escaped to South America with the collusion of the Vatican and enabled by powerful right-wing connections across the continent.
In part, 38 Londres Street picks up on the latter. Gestapo and SS operative Walther Rauff escaped from an Allied prison at the end of World War 2. He sheltered for 18 months in a Rome monastery, then made it to South America via Syria, settling first in Ecuador, then Chile. Sands delves into what made Rauff one of the most sought-after war criminals. He led an Einsatzgruppe killing squad in occupied Tunisia before conceptualising the mobile gas van units — the forerunner technology to the extermination camp gas chambers. The evil idea and his meticulous implementation thereof killed 95,000—100,000 Jews before the formal adoption and ramping up of the Final Solution.
Rauff’s story is relevant to Chile’s descent into brutal authoritarianism in two aspects: the vagaries and prevarications of the law, and his connection to Pinochet.
Rauff’s past caught up with him, and he was arrested in 1962 pending extradition to West Germany. But Chile’s supreme court ruled against extradition, freeing him on the basis of the country’s 15-year statute of limitations. Essentially, Rauff was granted immunity for his genocidal crimes.
This appalling, pedantic legal outcome enabled Rauff’s subsequent participation in the Pinochet regime’s atrocities.
Sands traces how the two men knew each other, then, as the narrative progresses, painstakingly details a trail of evidence regarding Rauff’s involvement in Pinochet’s state security apparatus, including the activities of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), Chile’s Gestapo-style secret police in the 1970s. DINA constructed concentration camps modelled on Germany’s during World War 2, “disappeared” thousands, and operated torture cells — the book taking its title from a particularly notorious one located at 38 Londres Street in Santiago.
Pinochet shielded Rauff from a second international attempt to extradite him in 1984. “Rauff has done nothing in Chile that would make him an undesirable. He has broken no laws,” said the president. Rauff died of natural causes a few months later at his son’s home in Santiago. His funeral was an openly Nazi-style send off.
Infuriatingly, the law — together with political manoeuvrings — played out in similar fashion to allow Pinochet to also entirely escape justice. This part of the book involves more complex legal explanations, but, paradoxically, it is also more riveting. Whereas Sands journeys Chile’s length to unravel Rauff’s secret life in his adopted country, and we too easily lose the thread of all the victims, collaborators and conspirators he interviews, the narrative involving Pinochet is relatively clear.
In 1990, a narrow-margin plebiscite vote returned Chile to democracy. No longer president, Pinochet nonetheless retained his positions as lifelong senator and commander of the military. Shrewdly, his government had enacted the Amnesty Law of 1978, preventing any criminal charges being brought against him.
In October 1998 the general went to London, ostensibly to procure weapons for the army, but in reality for a back operation.
For some years, Spanish authorities had been investigating the torture and murder of Spanish citizens in Chile during his rule. Judge Baltasar Garzón capitalised on Pinochet’s presence in Europe to issue a warrant of arrest, requesting Britain to extradite Pinochet. Sands is on expert ground in explaining the nuanced legal landscape that permits, indeed requires, this — in theory. In practice, heads of state have a de facto guarantee of immunity from prosecution beyond their country’s borders, as evidenced by the rarity of International Criminal Court (ICC) charges against world leaders even in clear cases of shocking, mass crimes.
As such, Britain’s magistrates, and later its highest courts, needed to make intricate judgments regarding Pinochet. At first Garzón’s request was granted. But this was only the start of multiple rounds of appeals and re-hearings.
And the politics played out behind the scenes. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher expressed outrage at the treatment of the leader of a Falklands War ally, publicly lobbying for Pinochet to be allowed to return home. Prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, was embarrassed. Spain’s right-leaning government was annoyed at its judiciary. Chile’s government insisted it alone had the authority to handle its domestic affairs — and centre-left president Eduardo Frei feared a military uprising or a right-wing surge unless Pinochet returned ahead of the country’s imminent elections.
In March 2000, the legal process finally at an end, and with Pinochet apparently in poor physical and cognitive health, Britain’s home secretary Jack Straw rejected the extradition on medical grounds. Pinochet returned home immediately, rising triumphantly from his wheelchair and walking unaided into Santiago’s airport terminal.
Sands makes the case that a political deal was done between Chile’s envoys, Blair and Spain’s prime minister, José María Aznar, and that Pinochet’s declining health was part of their agreed ruse.
Pinochet died five years later, aged 91, never having been held to account or facing any material consequences for the more than 3,000 people murdered and 28,000-30,000 tortured during his rule.
Sands’ career as a lawyer and author is rooted in evangelising the paramountcy of international laws that protect human rights and bring to justice those who perpetrate crimes against humanity. Within the book’s final words summarising the dastardly lives of Pinochet and Rauff — “they both got away with it. Sort of” — we sense his deep disappointment in how both human and moral law has played out in Chile.
Our Truth & Reconciliation Commission ended its proceedings more than 30 years ago, with much unresolved and many wounds still open. I wonder if Sands is considering SA for his next delve into state-sponsored crimes and the impunity of the perpetrators.
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