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IF YOU DO THE PINOCHET CASE, I’LL DIVORCE YOU’
Philippe Sands’ latest book explores the link between Chile’s former dictator and a Nazi mass murderer. He talks to Dominic Murphy about heroes and villains in his writing, and how his work as a human rights lawyer was never part of a grand plan.
Philippe Sands, barrister, academic and award- winning writer, has met some extraordinary people during his career. Take 88-year-old Laura González-Vera, who is interviewed in his new book 38 Londres Street.
It is 1970s Chile. General Augusto Pinochet is running the country following a military coup. It’s a dangerous time to be an opponent of the regime and you risk being abducted and disappeared by the brutal DINA, Pinochet’s secret police (38 Londres Street is the address of one of their torture centres in the Chilean capital of Santiago).
Laura, as Philippe relates in the book, has just learned her husband Carmelo Soria, a UN diplomat and no friend of the ruling junta, has been found dead, apparently drowned in a canal.
28 AMNESTY SPRING 2026
Laura is a doctor and suspects foul play. She is well connected and therefore able to insist at being present at Carmelo’s autopsy, to establish the real cause of his death and make sure there is no cover up. The courage this must have taken is unimaginable.
As well as heroes like Laura in 38 Londres
Street, there are villains, too – chiefly the book’s two principal characters who have been involved in mass murder at different, dark times in the 20th century. One of them is Augusto Pinochet, and the book begins with his 1998 arrest at a London clinic, following a request by Spain to extradite him for genocide (the murder of Carmelo Soria is part of the evidence against him). The other main character is Walther Rauff, a former SS colonel who escaped to Chile after
© Antonio Zazueta Olmos
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