One of the Highland’s most respected, experienced and knowledgeable prosecutors has decided to hang up his gown after 40 years in courts all over Scotland and the islands.
Solicitor advocate Roderick Urquhart was educated at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon’s College and Aberdeen University.
Following an apprenticeship with an Elgin firm, he joined the Procurator Fiscal Service as a depute in Ayr in 1983 and worked in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Kilmarnock, Kirkwall and Lerwick before a short spell in private practice between 2007 and 2009.
He also investigated war crimes, working for the Crown Office alongside law enforcement officers and prosecutors in Australia, Canada and Israel.
Mr Urquhart returned to prosecuting at Tain Sheriff Court before being appointed the sole jury prosecutor in Inverness in 2013.
He remained in that role for a number of years before the justice system and its partners moved to the multi-million pound Inverness Justice Centre.
His final responsibility was dealing with the north of Scotland’s health and safety cases.
Seconded to War Crimes Enquiry
During his long career, Mr Urquhart had many high-profile prosecutions including the Naked Rambler, GM crop protesters and Greenpeace activists who had boarded an oil rig in the Cromarty Firth.
It was during his secondment to the War Crimes Enquiry that he met Russia’s then-senior assistant procurator general for the USSR, Viktor Ilyukhin.
Mr Ilyukhin then became chairman of the State Duma’s anti-corruption committee, which brought high treason charges against former Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and the present incumbent, Vladimir Putin.
Like many of Putin’s critics, Ilyukhin died in dubious circumstances.
Mr Urquhart said: “It was said he died of a heart attack. His family called an ambulance but it never came.”
Considering his future plans, Mr Urquhart said: “My immediate plan is to do nothing but in the long term, get more involved in my local community.
“I am also a keen skier and I will be walking the dog and perhaps do some research into the history of my profession. I have discovered that the first procurator fiscal was appointed as far back as 1429.”