Abdul Salam Azimi (born 1936 in Farah Province) is an Afghan judge who was the Chief Justice of Afghanistan and, as such, the head of the Afghan Supreme Court from May 2006 to October 2014, when he resigned his position. A former

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

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 kn ...

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 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, Azimi served as legal advisor to Afghan President

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 Repu ...

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 gove ...

. 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 r ...

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, Nebraska, Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. List of ...

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, 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 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