Augusto Pinochet and the art of impunity

On March 3, 2000, after an airplane carrying General Augusto Pinochet landed in Santiago, Chile, his entourage pushed him in a wheelchair onto a mechanical lift as he smiled at the jubilant scene before him.

- JENNIFER SZALAI

Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990, had been detained in Britain while his lawyers fought attempts to extradite him to Spain, where a judge had issued an international arrest warrant for human rights violations committed by his regime.

After nearly 17 months, the British government eventually abandoned extradition proceedings; the 84-year-old Pinochet, who had been staying under house arrest just outside London, was deemed too ill to face charges in Spain. Yet upon his return to Chile, the old general appeared to be in robust health, standing up once his wheelchair touched the tarmac to give a military colleague a hearty embrace.

Years later, a woman whose husband was disappeared in 1974 remembered a broadcast of the moment as if it showed someone literally getting away with murder: “I felt consternation and rage, and a deep sense of impunity.”

Impunity is the central theme of 38 Londres Street, a marvellous and absorbing new book by the British-French lawyer and author Philippe Sands. In 1973, Pinochet and the Chilean military overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende and proceeded to crush opposition and dissent, unleashing state-sanctioned sadism as a means of both retribution and deterrence.