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Nazir Afzal
Nazir Afzal OBE (born 1 October 1962) is a British solicitor and former prosecutor within the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Afzal spent most of his career in the CPS, rising to be Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England in 2011, a role he held until leaving the CPS in 2015. In April 2016, he was appointed chief executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners; he resigned immediately after the May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing so that he could comment freely on the attack. He was appointed chancellor of the University of Manchester in 2022, succeeding Lemn Sissay on August 1.
In October 2017, he became a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) Complaints Committee. In 2018, he became the Chair of the Corporation Board at Hopwood Hall College in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
Afzal was born in Birmingham, his parents having emigrated from Pakistan. His father and his father's family worked for generations in catering for the British Army and one of his relatives was murdered by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. One of seven children, his family is of Pashtun ethnicity.
He grew up as one of seven siblings in a two-up two-down in Small Heath. He was bullied and racially abused throughout his childhood; those around him saw no point in reporting the incidents to the police. Following a racially motivated attack, aged 13, his father told him "The Police are not interested in you [...] there is no justice". Afzal states that with this incident came the realisation that racism "wasn't something I had to put up with. And I certainly wasn't going to spend the rest of my life running from abusers".
Afzal obtained his law degree from the University of Birmingham before attending The College of Law in Guildford, where he developed his interest in criminal law.
Afzal worked as a solicitor in Birmingham from 1988 until moving to London in 1991, where he became a Crown Prosecutor.
The first time one of Afzal's cases reached the national news was in August 1992, when the culprits were two supermarket employees who, following a works trip to the seaside, had sex in a crowded train back to London, and then lit up cigarettes in a no-smoking carriage. Afzal successfully prosecuted them for committing an indecent act and for smoking where not permitted to do so. This case was cited by an American academic in attempting to understand the British culture of tact.
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Nazir Afzal
Nazir Afzal OBE (born 1 October 1962) is a British solicitor and former prosecutor within the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Afzal spent most of his career in the CPS, rising to be Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England in 2011, a role he held until leaving the CPS in 2015. In April 2016, he was appointed chief executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners; he resigned immediately after the May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing so that he could comment freely on the attack. He was appointed chancellor of the University of Manchester in 2022, succeeding Lemn Sissay on August 1.
In October 2017, he became a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) Complaints Committee. In 2018, he became the Chair of the Corporation Board at Hopwood Hall College in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
Afzal was born in Birmingham, his parents having emigrated from Pakistan. His father and his father's family worked for generations in catering for the British Army and one of his relatives was murdered by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. One of seven children, his family is of Pashtun ethnicity.
He grew up as one of seven siblings in a two-up two-down in Small Heath. He was bullied and racially abused throughout his childhood; those around him saw no point in reporting the incidents to the police. Following a racially motivated attack, aged 13, his father told him "The Police are not interested in you [...] there is no justice". Afzal states that with this incident came the realisation that racism "wasn't something I had to put up with. And I certainly wasn't going to spend the rest of my life running from abusers".
Afzal obtained his law degree from the University of Birmingham before attending The College of Law in Guildford, where he developed his interest in criminal law.
Afzal worked as a solicitor in Birmingham from 1988 until moving to London in 1991, where he became a Crown Prosecutor.
The first time one of Afzal's cases reached the national news was in August 1992, when the culprits were two supermarket employees who, following a works trip to the seaside, had sex in a crowded train back to London, and then lit up cigarettes in a no-smoking carriage. Afzal successfully prosecuted them for committing an indecent act and for smoking where not permitted to do so. This case was cited by an American academic in attempting to understand the British culture of tact.
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