Anthony Marreco: Anthony Marreco, last remaining member of the British prosecution team which tried war criminals at Nuremberg has died aged 90.
Marreco was also a founder member of Amnesty International, a director of the London publishing firm Weidenfeld and Nicolson and a beef farmer at Port Hall near Lifford, Co Donegal.
His lifelong interest in human rights began at Westminster School, where his headmaster, Dr Crossley-White invited leading personalities of the day to dinner. At 17 Marreco met his childhood hero, TE Lawrence and Mahatma Ghandi, in those days "a considerable thorn in the side of the British government" who helped to form his liberal liberal ideas.
On leaving Westminster he trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He was expelled after being spotted by the principal's wife at the Derby, when he should have been attending classes.
Undeterred, he took a part in a West End production of Henry IV. His stage career was brief, but he remained interested in theatre all his life. In the 1970s, while investigating allegations of brutality by the British against detainees in Northern Ireland, he considered setting up a summer school at Port Hall to give children from bomb-blasted Derry a taste of theatre in education.
During the second World War, Marreco joined the fleet air arm and served aboard HMS Formidable. He continued to study law, and took his bar finals supervised by a chief petty officer on the island of Twatt in the Orkneys. In 1943 he married Lady Ursula Manners, daughter of the Duke of Rutland. She was the niece of Diana Cooper and had been the queen's train bearer at George VI's coronation. This gave Marreco an entrée into high society.
He became a pupil of the distinguished Irish lawyer Brian McKenna in Walter Monckton's chambers in the Temple. After the war ended, Marreco was asked by the attorney general, Hartley Shawcross, a sailing acquaintance of his father, if he would care to go to Nuremberg. When Marreco said yes, Shawcross told him to be in Grosvenor Square outside the American Embassy at 7am the next day. By lunchtime they were in Germany being briefed by the rest of the prosecution team.
At Nuremberg, 400 witnesses were assembled to give evidence against the defendants. Six criminal organisations including the Gestapo, the SS and the high command of the German army were also accused. Marreco's first task was to join a subsidiary tribunal convened under Airey Neave to sort out the witnesses.
During his year in Nuremberg he got to know all the defendants. He despised Ribbentrop, the former German ambassador to Britain, and loathed Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz whom he vividly remembered being "brought into the courtroom clanking in chains". He admired Goering, though, who he said was "the only one who bore himself like a gentleman and had a sense of humour".
Goering had at one point "allowed his fairy fingers to creep over the side of the witness box to pinch the bottom of a particularly attractive Wren officer". She objected and the court was in uproar. After that everyone had to enter the courtroom by a different door.
After the war Marreco left the Bar and turned to publishing. In 1960 he was introduced to Peter Benenson, who had just founded the organisation which was to become Amnesty International. Marreco conducted several investigations on behalf of Amnesty, notably in Paraguay, Greece and ultimately Northern Ireland.
On the morning of the coup d'etat in Greece, Marreco was at Port Hall, when the telephone rang and a voice said: "Mr Marreco, we have deposed our king."
"What do you expect me to do about it?"
"Inform the British Foreign Office."
Marreco later flew to Athens to investigate allegations of torture and the suspension of civil liberties. He interviewed Gen Patakos, but after this piece of bravado was advised to leave Greece immediately, which he did, smuggling out with him all remaining Amnesty personnel.
At Port Hall he bred a fine herd of Charolais cattle and was immediately accepted by that flamboyant section of Irish society known as "the Donegal Group". His hospitality was legendary. Guests ranged from Henry MacIlhenny, millionaire owner of Glenveagh Castle, to historian RB McDowell, who as dean of discipline at Trinity, once castigated future President Mary Robinson.
Marreco interested himself in all aspects of Irish life. He bought the harbour at Bunbeg, intending to turn it into a tourist centre, though it was used more often for hugely enjoyable picnics. He was also chairman of the Foyle Fisheries Commission and waged constant war against salmon poachers, but his chief passion, apart from beautiful women, was the study of international law.
In 1983 he offered Port Hall to the Irish Government as an institute of international criminal law. He wished to establish an association with the Irish universities a centre where lawyers, journalists and peace researchers from all over the world could study the problems arising from the development and enforcement of international law.
In the last year of his life he wished to make his own documentary, The Rule of Law, tracing the development of international law from the time of Grotius, the 17th century philosopher, to the present day.
He believed devoutly in the conventions established at Nuremberg that the conspiracy or common plan to make aggressive war was a criminal offence. Under this convention, he said, not only Saddam Hussein, but arguably also British prime minister Tony Blair and US president George W Bush could be tried in the International Court at the Hague.
Marreco was married four times - in 1943 to Lady Ursula Manners, which was dissolved in 1948; in 1955 to Gina Marreco; in 1961 to Anne Wignall, author of The Rebel Countess, a Life of Constance Gore-Booth and in 2004 again to Gina Marreco, who survives him.
Anthony Marreco; born August 9th, 1915; died June 4th, 2006