Desmond de Silva (barrister)

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Sir George Desmond Lorenz de Silva, QC, KStJ (13 December 1939 – 2 June 2018) was a British criminal law barrister and international lawyer who served as the United Nations Chief War Crimes Prosecutor in Sierra Leone.

Early life[edit]

Desmond de Silva was of Sri Lankan, English, and Scottish descent, and comes from a family of lawyers. He was the son of Fredrick de Silva MBE, formerly Ceylon's ambassador to France and Switzerland, and his wife Esme Gregg de Silva;[1] a grandson of George E. de Silva; and a second cousin of Lasantha Wickrematunge.[2]

Educated at Dulwich College Preparatory School, London, and Trinity College, Kandy, Sri Lanka, de Silva trained as a barrister at the Middle Temple, London.[1]

Career[edit]

De Silva was called to the bar from the Middle Temple in 1964, and was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1984.[1] A member of the Criminal Bar Association and the International Association of Prosecutors, he became one of the highest-profile criminal Queen's Counsel in England. In 2002, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed him as Deputy Prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, at the level of an Assistant Secretary-General, and in 2005 promoted him to the post of Chief Prosecutor at the higher level of Under Secretary-General. Silva brought about the arrest of Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia, who was convicted of war crimes at the Hague in 2011.

In 2003, de Silva was sent as an envoy by the United Nations Development Programme to Belgrade to persuade Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and his government to surrender indicted war criminals. He became a senior associate member of St Antony's College, Oxford, and a Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple.[1] De Silva's legal expertise included war crimes, crimes against humanity, espionage, treason, drugs, terrorism, human rights, white-collar fraud and sports law. His clients included John Terry, Lee Bowyer, Buzz Aldrin,[3] Harry Redknapp, Ron Atkinson, Hans Segers, Lawrence Dallaglio, Graham Rix and Jamie Osborne. De Silva was a member of the Governing Council of the Manorial Society.[4]

In October 2011, with the approval of Prime Minister David Cameron, de Silva was appointed to head a Review into collusion by the security services and other agencies of the state into the 1989 murder of the high-profile Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane. The report was published on 12 December 2012, and acknowledged "a willful and abject failure by successive Governments";[5][6] however, Finucane's family called the de Silva report a "sham".[7] In 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that the official investigation into the Finucane murder was ineffective and failed to meet the required human rights standards. [8]

On 23 July 2010, he was appointed[9] by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate Israel's interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla in international waters that led to 9 deaths. In 2014, he was Chairman of an Inquiry into torture and executions of detainees in Syria. The Report produced went before the Geneva 11 Peace Talks into the civil war in Syria. On 10 January 2016, a Senior Army Commander complained about a "witch hunt" against British soldiers who were Iraq War veterans by pursuing frivolous legal claims. De Silva agreed with the Army Chief by saying, "Up to now nobody has got these ambulance-chasing lawyers by the scruff of the neck."[10]

Personal life and death[edit]

He married Princess Katarina of Yugoslavia on 5 December 1987. She was the daughter of Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia and Princess Margarita of Baden, a granddaughter of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and the great-great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. They had one daughter, Victoria Marie Esmé Margarita, born on 6 September 1991. They divorced on 6 May 2010.[11] He had one sister, Helga de Silva, whose son Detmar Blow was married to the late Isabella Blow.

Sir Desmond de Silva died on 2 June 2018 after a stroke following elective heart surgery in November 2017.[3]

Honours[edit]

De Silva was knighted in the 2007 New Year Honours, and was also a Knight of the Most Venerable Order of Saint John[1] and a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Francis I.[citation needed] He was sworn in as a Member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in October 2011.[12] On 22 August 2016, Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia awarded him with the Grand Cross of the Order of the White Eagle.[13]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e "De Silva, Rt Hon. Sir Desmond (George Lorenz)", in Who's Who and Who Was Who, online edition, https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U13560 Published 01 December 2018: "De Silva, Rt Hon. Sir Desmond (George Lorenz) (13 Dec. 1939–2 June 2018), QC 1984; international lawyer; Chief Prosecutor of UN-sponsored Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2005–06; Kt 2007; PC 2011; Born 13 Dec. 1939; s of late Edmund Frederick Lorenz de Silva, MBE, and Esme Gregg de Silva…"
  2. ^ Raine Wickrematunge, And then they came for me: The Lasantha Wickrematunge Story (Author House, 2013, ISBN 1481789902), pp. 2–5
  3. ^ a b Hardy, Jack (12 December 2018). "Top QC left under freezing air vent in hospital before his death after operation, inquest hears". The Telegraph.
  4. ^ "Governing Council of the Manorial Society". Archived from the original on 7 January 2007. Retrieved 24 February 2007.
  5. ^ De Silva, Rt. Hon. Sir Desmond (12 December 2012). "Pat Finucane Review: Executive Summary And Principal Conclusions". Archived from the original on 14 December 2012. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  6. ^ Bowcott, Owen (12 December 2012). "Pat Finucane report: army handlers 'helped loyalist gunmen select targets'". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  7. ^ Bowcott, Owen (12 December 2012). "Finucane family denounce report as a 'sham'". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  8. ^ correspondent, Owen Bowcott Legal affairs (27 February 2019). "Pat Finucane murder inquiry fell below human rights standards, judges rule". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  9. ^ "UN rights body names team to probe Gaza flotilla raid ", Haaretz, 23 July 2010
  10. ^ https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-sunday-telegraph/20160110/281500750240896/TextView. Retrieved 22 October 2019 – via PressReader. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. ^ Blood Royal - From the time of Alexander the Great to Queen Elizabeth II, by Charles Mosley, published for Ruvigny Ltd., London, 2002 (p. 288); ISBN 0-9524229-9-9
  12. ^ "Orders approved at the Privy Council held by the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 16th November 2011" (PDF).
  13. ^ "Crown Prince awards Royal Orders to husbands of Karadjordjevic Princesses". The Royal Family of Serbia. 22 August 2016.

External links[edit]

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