Desmond de Silva

Sir George Desmond Lorenz de Silva, (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 Desmond de Silva was Sri Lankan by birth, and comes from a family of lawyers. He was the son of Fredrick de Silva, formerly Ceylon's ambassador to France and Switzerland, and his wife Esme Gregg de Silva;

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

Career De Silva was called to the bar from the Middle Temple in 1964, and was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1984.

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"; however, Finucane's family called the de Silva report a "sham". 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.

On 23 July 2010, he was appointed 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."

Personal life and death 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 a 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. 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.

Honours De Silva was knighted in the 2007 New Year Honours, and was also a Knight of the Most Venerable Order of Saint John On 22 August 2016, Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia awarded him with the Grand Cross of the Order of the White Eagle.