Abdul Salam Azimi (born 1936 in

Farah Province Farah (Dari: , ''Farā'') is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the southwestern part of the country next to Iran. It is a spacious and sparsely populated province, divided into eleven districts and contains hundreds of villages. ...

) is an Afghan judge who was the

Chief Justice of Afghanistan The chief justice of Afghanistan is the head of Afghanistan's supreme court. There have been multiple supreme courts throughout Afghanistan's history. The current supreme court is the Supreme Court of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and its ...

and, as such, the head of the

Afghan Supreme Court prs, دادگاه عالی , image = Logo of the Supreme Court of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.jpg , imagesize = 150 , alt = , caption = Logo of the Supreme Court of Afghanistan , image2 ...

from May 2006 to October 2014, when he resigned his position. A former

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

at the

University of Nebraska at Omaha The University of Nebraska Omaha (Omaha or UNO) is a public research university in Omaha, Nebraska. Founded in 1908 by faculty from the Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary as a private non-sectarian college, the university was originally kno ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, Azimi served as legal advisor to

Afghan President The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was constitutionally the head of state and head of government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021) and Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces. On 15 August 2021, as ...

Hamid Karzai Hamid Karzai (; Pashto/ fa, حامد کرزی, , ; born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan statesman who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Repub ...

and assisted with writing the 2004

Constitution of Afghanistan Afghanistan is a totalitarian theocracy and emirate in which the Taliban Islamic Movement holds a monopoly on power. Dissent is not permitted, and politics are mostly limited to internal Taliban policy debates and power struggles. As the governm ...

. He is an ethnic

Pashtun Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically re ...

of the Alizai tribe. Prior to the Soviet Invasion of 1979, Azimi and his family resided in the Kabul province of Afghanistan and were forced to flee the country in 1981 after the fall of the Communist regime and resulting civil war. Azimi has three daughters and three sons, one being Abdul Ghafar Azimi who studied in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...

and graduated from the

, and another is Hanan Azimi, who also studied at the

, and is a well-respected teacher in the Omaha area. As chief justice, Azimi replaced

Faisal Ahmad Shinwari Fazal Hadi Shinwari (1927 – February 21, 2011) was an Afghan cleric who served as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Afghanistan from 2001 until 2006. He was appointed to the post by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in accordance with the ...

, a conservative Islamic cleric with no higher education. Azimi, in contrast, is reported to have gained a reputation as a fair-minded moderate active in upholding the

rule of law The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica ...

and improving the country's dilapidated legal system.

References

External links

Biography of Abdul Salam Azimi
University of Arizona faculty 1936 births People from Farah Province Afghan Sunni Muslims Living people Pashtun people Supreme Court Justices of Afghanistan {{Afghanistan-bio-stub

See also

References

External links