"She said: 'If you represent Pinochet in this case, I will divorce you""

PHILIPPE SANDS tells Rob Attar about his involvement in the sensational trial of the Chilean dictator, and how it connects to a Nazi on the run

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Rob Attar: In 1998, the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in London. How seismic a moment was this?

Philippe Sands: I remember the moment of learning of Pinochet's arrest. It was a Saturday afternoon. It happened to be my birthday, and I was settling down to watch the football results at five o'clock when the news came on and they announced that Augusto Pinochet had been arrested for murder and crimes against humanity. It was huge. It was the first time that a former head of state, while travelling abroad, had been arrested on international crimes.

Someone not familiar with the story might wonder why this was happening in London, not Santiago. What can you tell us about the geography of these events?

By way of background, in September 1973 Augusto Pinochet, head of the Chilean military, seized power in a coup d'etat and remained there for 17 years. Over that period, hundreds of thousands were arrested, tens of thousands were tortured and 'disappeared', and many remain so to this day. There are about 1,300 people unaccounted for.

This had attracted considerable interest around the world, because these are actions that would be characterised as international crimes within the meaning of the 1945 Nuremberg trials and definitions. And that is coupled with a principle known as universal jurisdiction, where when certain crimes take place, the courts of any country in the world may exercise jurisdiction. In October 1998 a Spanish judge named Baltasar Garzón decided to issue an arrest warrant for Senator Pinochet, while he was in London receiving medical treatment, for international crimes. That was the start of this part of the story.

The connection with Spain is interesting because Pinochet's relationship with the west was quite complex. He had a lot of friends in western countries, particularly America and Britain, for example.