How Dictators Evade Justice — and Why It Still Works: Philippe Sands’ 38 Londres Street

 

Philippe Sands, renowned international lawyer and notable author of East West Street and The Ratline has built a distinguished literary and legal career by blending rigorous international law with deep personal and historical narratives.

In his new book, Sands returns with a chilling and meticulously researched exposé that links two notorious figures: Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Nazi SS officer Walther Rauff.

His major works now form a thematic trilogy on justice, memory, and impunity, each exploring different dimensions of state violence and accountability.

In 38 Londres Street, Sands writes not merely as a chronicler of legal history, but as a moral cartographer, tracing the fault lines where law, memory, war and power collide.

The book’s title refers to a nondescript building in Santiago, Chile—once a torture site under Pinochet’s regime—that becomes a symbolic and literal locus for Sands’s inquiry into the machinery of state violence and the ghosts it leaves behind.  (more...)

How Dictators Evade Justice — and Why It Still Works: Philippe Sands’ 38 Londres Street