Hi, it's Samantha Selinger Morris here.

And I'm the host of the Morning Edition.

We're bringing you the best episodes of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns.

Mid January.

As we say goodbye to 2025, we can only hope.

We can also see an end to the swirling chaos of multiple wars that raged across the world and in the case of the Israel-Gaza conflict, fractured so much of our society.

Today we return to a special episode with British barrister and human rights lawyer Philip Sands, who defended Palestine at the International Court of Justice on how to retain compassion and integrity in our fragmented world.

So, Philip, we have to start with your latest book, 38 Landry Street.

In part, it's about how the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet escaped to Chile unpunished after being arrested and charged with crimes against humanity and genocide.

Now you were involved in the case to try to hold him to account in Britain.

Tell us, what were you arguing and why?

In the end, did Pinochet not get his day in court?

Well, thank you for that question.

I was originally contacted by his lawyers, asked to act for him.

I would have done so because we have a principle at the English bar, as in many bars in Australia and elsewhere, called the cab rank principle.

We don't turn down cases because we don't like the person's politics or the cut of their jib or whatever.

But, uh, my wife told me she would divorce me if I did the case, and, um, I didn't do the case.

And then Human Rights Watch came along, and I acted against Pinochet.

And what that meant, amongst other things, was I had a front row seat throughout the 500 or so days that he was incarcerated in London, through all the shenanigans and proceedings.

It was an incredible story.

So Augusto Pinochet was the head of the army in in Chile.

And on September the 11th, 1973, He, uh, led a coup d'état overthrowing a democratically elected leftist socialist president, Salvador Allende, who would die by his own hand during the events of that day.

And for the next 17 years, he was head of state.

From the very first days, the military junta determined that there were many undesirables who would be got rid of and got rid of meant, um, detained, tortured, killed, or disappeared.

And to this day, 1300 people are still disappeared.

And the upshot was the then Home Secretary, Jack straw, decided in January 2000, uh, that he was not fit for trial.

And one of the storylines in this book is, was he indeed not fit for trial, or was it a ruse to get him back?

Okay, well, let's get to Walter Rauff because of course, he is a great focus of your book as well.

He was a Nazi SS officer involved in the invention of the gas vans that were the precursor to the gas chambers in the concentration camps where millions of people were murdered during the Holocaust.

Now, Walter Ralph also escaped justice.

Tell us about how and where he escaped to, because you really couldn't make it up.

Uh, and let's just start there because you really couldn't make it up.

You you really couldn't.

I mean, you really couldn't.

So he oversees the operation of these mobile gas vans in 1941 and 1942.

Hundreds of thousands of human beings are murdered in this way.

He gets up to various other nasty.

He's off to Tunisia, where he's responsible for the extermination of the Jews.

And he then is posted in Milan, where he's responsible for rounding up and getting rid of partisans, leftists, and so on and so forth.

To this day, he's still a hated figure in in Milan.

His name is notorious.

He escaped first to Syria and then makes his way via Italy to South America.

Ralph had every reason to hide in 1940.

He had deployed gas chamber trucks in Eastern Europe to assist SS commandos in the mass murdering of communists, gypsies, the handicapped and above all, Jews.

Where in 1956, he and his wife Edith meet a charming Chilean couple who tell them they are in the wrong country and they should really be in Chile, where they love people like him.

And there's a fine German community.

The key to his whereabouts was here in Santiago.

A local telephone directory produced the first clue.

I checked through its columns, revealed this name, the only Ralph listed in the city, and he becomes the manager of a king crab cannery.

He fights off an effort to extradite him to West Germany for prosecution for crimes against humanity and genocide.

And then on September the 11th, 1973, the day of the coup to which we had just made mention, miracle of miracles, his friend from Quito, Ecuador, becomes head of state of Chile because it is none other than Augusto Pinochet.

A sleepy street some kilometers from the city center.

Suddenly, the unexpected happened.

Approaching from the north end of Los Pozos was a man himself, SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff, the alleged murderer of a quarter of a million human beings.

And really, is it legal limitations that, in the end, prevented him from being convicted, seeing his day in court?

Because my understanding is that Germany requested to extradite him to Chile, and that the Chilean Supreme Court declined on the grounds that the country's laws applied to the crimes Ralph was accused of committing, and that the statute of limitations had expired.

So that's really key to this, isn't it?

Spot on, spot on.

Basically, Chile had a rule which said for an extradition to take place, the crime alleged must have occurred no more than 15 years earlier.

So the crimes of the gas vans had occurred in 41 and 42, 21, 22 years had passed, and therefore the Chilean Supreme Court, by six votes to one, ruled that he could not be extradited, and he goes back to his job and runs the King Crab Cannery.

I mean, the guy is a raging anti-Semite for the rest of his life.

Every year he celebrates the Führer's birthday.

There are sing songs with other old Nazi comrades, a truly nasty piece of work.

And there's no question he had a visceral hatred not only of Jews, but also of communists and other and many others, and he adhered to the same views for the entirety of his life.

And there's another personal connection which I have to ask you about, because, of course, 38 Laundry Street isn't just a detective legal thriller.

It really is partly a memoir, and you have a personal connection.

I think it can be said to Walter Ralph, really in the most horrible of ways.

I believe some of your relatives probably died in Ralph's gas vans.

So who were these relatives and how, if in any way, did this impact your writing?

Yeah, I find this very touching.

It was only in writing East West Street that I really came to understand what had happened to my mother and her family in Vienna in 1938 and 1939, and I came to learn the full details of how she was taken to safety by a remarkable lady, an evangelical Christian missionary called Elsie Tilney.

Elsie Tilney travels from Paris to the West Bahnhof in Vienna to pick up two little girls.

One is my mother, Ruth, and the other is my mother's 12 year old cousin.

Hertha and Hertha at the station decides she cannot bear to be separated from her mother and stays in Vienna, and two years later, Hertha and her mother are deported from Vienna with my great grandmother to Poland, and they end up in the ghetto, in lodge and lodge is where the mobile gas van had a serious activity.

And the materials on the mobile gas vans fingering Valter Ralph um appear in the Nuremberg trial in relation to the lodge ghetto.

And so there appears to be a direct connection, you know, between the murder of Herta Gruber and her mother and and Valter Ralph.

And that is, of course, very personal.

And again, as I as I said before, in a sense that makes it more real and, and and even more alive, but it also makes it more difficult because when you've got a personal element, the way I write my books, I do want to keep a certain distance.

I don't want to get overly emotional.

I don't want to, you know, do a great big sob story.

That's not my style of writing.

And it becomes much more difficult to distance yourself when there are family members involved, and that does produce in some readers a sentiment of how could you talk to this person or give that person space?

But that is really, I think, what makes the books have more resonance and have more readers, because I'm leaving it to the readers to form their own views and their own emotions.

I don't want to impose my emotions on the readers, but at times, to be honest, it is.

It's difficult.

It's very difficult.

Totally understandable.

And it leads me to my next thing I really wanted to ask you about, because just last year, you were involved in an incredibly consequential case in the International Court of Justice on behalf of Palestine for the removal of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

And, well, I guess how did you come to that role?

Is it something you wanted to take on in particular?

Sure.

No, I mean, I do.

So I have three lives.

I'm a professor at the university.

I'm a barrister, and I do.

I only do cases before international courts, And I and I write books.

I had been involved for 15 years on a case for a small African country called Mauritius against the United Kingdom, and it concerned the illegal occupation by the United Kingdom of an archipelago, the Chagos Archipelago, which included one island, Diego Garcia, well known where there's a large US military base.

And that turned on what's called the right of self-determination, the right of a people to determine for themselves what their future direction is going to be.

So after the Chagos case, the decision on that came down from the International Court of Justice in 2019.

A year or so later, members of the team on the Mauritius case were invited by the Palestinian Authority in, uh, in New York at the United Nations.

Would we be involved in a similar request from the General Assembly of the United Nations?

And of course, it's a very sensitive issue for a lot of people.

Um, but this was a technical issue on the right of self-determination of an entire people in relation to the territory of the West Bank in relation to Gaza.

And I had no problem doing it.

And I'm often asked about this, you know, and I'll say, you know, the fact that I did the case for Mauritius, um, on self-determination on Chagos, in which the United Kingdom is in a sense the opposing party doesn't make me anti-British and and I think it's exactly the same doing a case on self-determination for the Palestinian Authority.

To be clear, I would not have done it for Hamas.

This is the Palestinian Authority, an entity which recognises the right of Israel to exist, meant sort of, sort of.

It was a no brainer.

But for many people, you know, it's crossing a line.

It's inappropriate.

That's not how I function.

And the reality is many of my cases involve sensitive issues.

And that's because I believe ultimately my social function as a barrister in these cases is to contribute to the development of the rule of law.

That's really what it's about.

So I did participate in the case.

The International Court of Justice then gave its decision, and it ruled very clearly that the Palestinian people have a right of self-determination and that right of self-determination has been violated and is being violated.

And, of course, right now we have all the debate and the discussion in relation to the horrors that happened on October the 7th and the horrors that have happened subsequently and are continuing to this day about the creation of a Palestinian state.

And we're shortly going to have a big conference at the UN and some countries that have not been willing to recognize a Palestinian state because of what the court has said on the right of self-determination, now appear to be on the cusp of doing so.

And, you know, I've I've understand these things are very contentious and different people have very different views about it.

And, um, and I respect many of those views, but ultimately my commitment is to the idea of the rule of law.

Well, this is why I am so delighted to have you on today, because I feel like we're in a similar situation before we started recording, I'll tell the listeners, both you and I are Jewish, and we are both reflecting on what a febrile environment this now is to be discussing these issues.

And I just wanted to ask you for people who are having conversations about Israel and Gaza in particular, all the issues you've just mentioned who are struggling to to converse in any sort of productive way.

Because I've noticed, I guess, since October 7th in particular, that people who advocate for Palestine or they advocate for Israel, they seem to be really blocked from feeling compassion, perhaps for the other side, or perhaps understanding what each other feels.

And, you know, I'm just wondering if do you have any advice and tell me about any uncomfortable conversations you've had, if any?

You know, in particular, possibly from Jewish people who have said, well, you know.

I mean, these are as you as you rightly say, these are intensely personal things.

And I think it's for each person to find their own path.

I've found a path that I'm very, very comfortable with.

I mean, I was appalled by what happened on October the 7th, and I sensed, as many others did, that it was going to be followed by further horrors as it has been.

I joined with, um, half a dozen other British Jewish lawyers, including the former president of the British Supreme Court, David Neuberger, in writing a piece for the Financial Times about 2 or 3 weeks after the events of October the 7th.

And we made three points.

And I stick to those three points.

They are my guiding lines.

One what happened on October the 7th was a crime under international law.

Whatever name you give it.

It was wrong and it was criminal and it was outrageous.

Two Israel as a sovereign state has a right of self-defense.

It cannot possibly stand by while such things are happening.

But and this is where things get more tricky.

three.

The exercise of that right of self-defense must be in accordance with the norms of international law.

That means you cannot target civilians.

You cannot starve people.

You cannot seek to purify a territory.

As an Israeli minister has apparently recently said, there was some criticism of us that we were somehow assuming that one crime on October the 7th, would be followed by another crime.

But that is, of course, what has happened.

I mean, there's no way to conclude that what is happening in Gaza today is lawful.

Anything more than what happened on October the 7th is lawful, and that is my roadmap for going forward.

I use the rules of international law to provide guidance for me as to what is right for me and what is wrong for me.

But I respect that it is for each person to find their own path.

Okay, now I really appreciate that.

I think those are excellent points, but I did want to follow up by asking, do you have any conversational tools or tools of narrative or something?

Because you're a very unique person.

You aren't just a barrister who's you know who, whose focus is the facts and it's, you know, very clinical, perhaps in its way, but you're also a storyteller.

You know, you're this interesting combination of things.

And I've noticed in my own conversations with people on opposite sides of the political spectrum that whatever rational point you make on either side, there's a counter, right.

So, for instance, you know, you might say what you've just said and someone who's advocating for Israel would say, well, you know, the proceedings are illegitimate.

You know, that's what Israel, of course, has argued about that case that you were involved with at the International Court of Justice.

So I'm just wondering, is it about appealing to people's primal emotions?

You know, that people, no matter where they are, they deserve safety.

They deserve dignity.

They deserve humanity.

Like, how can we appeal to people?

Because for whatever fact you give, there's going to be a counter fact, right?

Like I often find that devolves into chaos and recriminations.

Do you?

Yeah, yeah, up to up to a point.

I mean, to come back to link that question to the previous question.

I've ended a number of relationships and friendships because of positions adopted by people in relation to this particular conflict.

October the 7th and subsequently.

I have no truck with extremist views on either side.

People who fail to have a position of empathy for any person of innocence who gets caught up in this horror, whether it is the people who were lined up and executed on October the 7th, or the people in Gaza who are on the receiving end of the horrors that are continuing.

And so, for example, when one former colleague of mine tries to say to me that what happened on October the 7th was not an act of execution or murder, people just got caught in the crossfire.

I haven't spoken to that person since.

I just I don't want to engage with those kinds of views on either side.

I will, you know, they want to have those views.

I'm not going to change those views.

I'll stick to my to my position.

And I think that the way I've managed to go through, as I said, is with a roadmap.

Um, you know, the argument, frankly, that what happened at the International Court of Justice on self-determination and Palestine is illegitimate.

It's just it's just a nonsense.

It's an absolute nonsense.

I go back to a conversation that I had, um, in relation to another case.

I'm involved as counsel right now in the case brought by the Gambia against Myanmar in relation to the allegations of genocide in relation to the Rohingya.

Um, a community in Myanmar.

And five years ago, I was involved in the first aspect of that case, and I was on a panel in, uh, uh, George Washington University in Washington, DC with a former American judge at the International Court of Justice, a wonderful man called Thomas Bergendahl, who's written, incidentally, for your listeners, an extraordinary book called A Lucky Child, A Book of great humanity.

Tom Bergendahl, at the age of ten, was at Auschwitz and was under the care of a medical doctor called Josef Mengele.

So Thomas Bergendahl knows what it means to be on the receiving end of horror.

And he said to me, can you imagine, Philippe, this is in relation to the Rohingya case at the international court.

If in 1944, when I was in Auschwitz, there had been a piece of paper called a convention on crimes against humanity or genocide or against torture or whatever, and there had been an international court and a faraway country had gone to that international court and said, Germany, you cannot treat people in this way.

He wasn't drawing an analogy, but he was basically saying the existence of these institutions and these obligations under international law, which came out of the horrors of the 1940s, would have given us hope.

They may not have changed the situation and institutions, and the idea and the ideal of the rule of law offers another way of going.

And I think that is the message that is extremely important for me.

You know, in that case, in the hearings in the, in The Hague, uh, I was for Gambia against Myanmar.

I sat literally next to an San Suu Kyi who was leading the case for Myanmar, the former Nobel Peace Prize winner.

She was the agent of Myanmar, and I didn't like much that she said that day.

But one thing she said that really has stayed with me.

She said, Mr.

President, members of the court, we don't agree on much.

But one thing is clear.

The only language we have in common is the language of international law.

And I thought that was very interesting.

And that is emblematic of, I think, my approach to the way forward.

That's fascinating.

And I guess I wanted to ask you, you know, you've worked in this space as a barrister.

you've researched the history of various crimes against humanity.

I'd love to know your long view.

You know, do the perpetrators of hideous crimes against people, whether it's Jewish people or Palestinians or Chileans, do the perpetrators of these crimes more often than not meet their justice?

No they don't.

And it's rare for the former head of state who's committed crimes to get the tap on the shoulder.

That is what happened to Augusto Pinochet.

And that is what is so remarkable about that story.

It was the first time in human history that a former head of state of one country is arrested in the territory of another country for international crimes committed elsewhere.

I've said this.

I think many times the idea of justice, both domestically and internationally, is a long game, and we're in it for the long run.

You can't imagine that in 1945, these new rules were created, and then all of a sudden, everyone keels over and says, oh, yes, absolutely.

I'm going to comply with all these new obligations.

Life just isn't like that.

I take my cue from my favorite poet singer in the whole world.

Someone I listen to every single day.

I'm going to guess you can.

Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen.

I knew it only because I read an interview with you, and I think you were playing anthem.

Yes.

And it is a line from anthem.

There is a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in.

It's the line that guides me.

It's the line that keeps us going in the darkest of times, even right now, as we see on the ground in Gaza, images of apparent starvation, which are, I think, very painful for all people of good faith and decency.

We just have to keep going, even though it's difficult and even though it's unlikely very often that the rules themselves, whether it's October the 7th or subsequently, whether it's Sudan, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's many other places in the world that the rules themselves will not, with immediate effect, stop the horrors.

But they provide a modicum of hope.

It has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.

Thank you so much for your time.

Oh thank you.

I've really enjoyed the conversation so beautifully.

Well prepared.

Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself and Tammy Mills.

Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.

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Notes.

I'm Samantha Selinger.

Morris, thanks for listening.