The Prosecutor

Meet the true face of British justice.

Nazir Afzal knows a thing or two about justice. As a Chief Prosecutor, it was his job to make sure the most complex, violent and harrowing crimes made it to court, and that their perpetrators were convicted. From the Rochdale sex ring to the earliest prosecutions for honour killing and modern slavery, Nazir was at the forefront of the British legal system for decades.

But his story begins in Birmingham, in the sixties, as a young boy facing racist violence and the tragic death of a young family member – and it’s this that sets him on the path to his groundbreaking career, and which enables him to help communities that the conventional justice system ignores, giving a voice to the voiceless.

A memoir of struggle and survival as well as crime and punishment, The Prosecutor is both a searing insight into the justice system and a powerful story of one man’s pursuit of the truth.

Nazir Afzal OBE is former a Chief Crown Prosecutor and was Chief Executive of the UK’s Police & Crime Commissioners. During a 24-year career, Nazir prosecuted some of the most high profile cases in the country and advised on many others, with a special focus on domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and honour-based violence. He worked personally on the most high-profile cases whilst simultaneously overseeing the thousands of prosecutions each year, and is particularly notable for his prosecution of the so called Rochdale sex grooming gang. Today he sits on the board of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and is also National Adviser on Gender Based Violence to the Welsh Government. In 2018 he joined the advisory board of Google’s Innovation Fund for counter-extremism.