Norfolk: Prosecutor honoured with OBE

01/07/2010

Crown Prosecution Service Prosecutor Philip Alcock has been honoured with an OBE in the recent Queen's birthday honours list.

Mr Alcock, 63, who had previously worked for the CPS for many years and who is currently employed as a prosecutor with Norfolk CPS, received the award for his work in the War Crime Department of the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He spent four years there investigating and prosecuting war criminals. One offender who he successfully prosecuted was Gojko Jankovic a paramilitary commander, who received a sentence of 34 years imprisonment for the rape and sexual slavery of young Bosnian muslim women. Jankovics soldiers had also brutally tortured and murdered seven men in related incidents. Mr Alcocks work in Bosnia ended in October 2009 and because of ethnic tensions that were generated from the war there his role often required the exercise of diplomacy and discretion to ensure that justice was done.

Mr Alcock was nominated by the Foreign Office for his achievements in such work.

Mr Alcock started his career working in the Attorney General's office in Rhodesia, and thereafter he was a partner in the well-known Harare law firm of Gill, Godlonton and Gerrans. He left Zimbabwe for good in 1986 after conducting a prolonged defence case against Robert Mugabes government in order to secure the release of six tortured airforce officers from prison there. He returned to UK where he was born and then qualified as an English solicitor and joined the CPS in 1988.

He gained his High Court Advocate qualification in 1999 and began his war crime work as an International Prosecutor working for the United Nations in Kosovo from 2001 to 2004.

Mr Alcock said: "It's a great honour to be recognised in this way. The work I have done investigating war crimes has made me realise how very easily ordinary people can be incited to commit violence in an armed conflict situation and how easily even the most mild-mannered of us can suddenly turn to cruelty or violence when placed in a war situation. War crime has to be prosecuted, the work is slow and not all offenders can be brought to justice but the message must always be sent that those who commit brutality in war will be called before a court to account for such crimes."