Many people will remember the late Karl Hudson-Phillips as an accomplished Caribbean man who took on high-profile, controversial court cases. (He served as lead counsel in the murder trial of former Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop). Others will remember Hudson-Phillips as a brilliant son of the soil whose political ambitions never came to pass after the party he founded, the Organisation for National Reconstruction (ONR), failed to gain a single seat in the 1981 general elections.
I will always remember Hudson-Phillips as a dignified man with a remarkable legal mind and as a person who went out of his way to assist me in my early days as a journalist.
The former Attorney General and former judge of the International Criminal Court, who died in London at the age of 80 last week, appeared somewhat aloof because of his formal demeanour, but I always found Hudson-Phillips to be kind, helpful and supportive. I was fascinated by his astute mind, and I spent many hours, sometimes entire days, sitting in his office discussing the news with him in my early days as a journalist.
I first met him when I went on a desperate search for a story destined to become part of the special Monday Express. Editor-in-Chief Owen Baptiste, who was always full of creative ideas, had decided to create a Monday Express that would be an edgy follow-up to the Sunday paper.
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