Philippe Sands talks to Richard Ovenden

International lawyer Professor Philippe Sands describes his investigations into the post-war life of SS officer Walther Rauff in Chilean Patagonia and his connections to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Sands was approached to represent Pinochet as he faced arrest in London in 1998. Instead, he chose to act as a barrister for Human Rights Watch. Sands explains how this decision led to an eight-year investigation into Rauff’s life, a man responsible for wartime horrors who fled to Patagonia where he managed a king crab cannery. While this role was seemingly distant from his dark past, Sands explains how his investigations into Pinochet’s intelligence services, its activities at 38 Londres Street in Santiago and the disappearances that plagued Chile revealed disturbing links between the atrocities of the 1940s and those of our own time.

Sands is professor of public understanding of law at University College London and a practising barrister. He has been involved in many international cases including Pinochet and the campaigns over the Chagos Islands. His books include Lawless World, Torture Team, East West Street, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction, The Ratline and The Last Colony. Here he talks to Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden.

Presented by the Bodleian Libraries.