Alma Zadić
Zadić in 2020
Minister of Justice
Assumed office
7 January 2020
PresidentAlexander Van der Bellen
Chancellor
Preceded byClemens Jabloner
Personal details
Born
Alma Zadić

(1984-05-24) 24 May 1984
Tuzla, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia
Political partyThe Greens – The Green Alternative
Children1
Alma materUniversity of Vienna
Columbia University

Alma Zadić (German: [ˈalma 'zaditʃ]; born 24 May 1984) is a Bosnian-born Austrian lawyer and politician of the Green Party. She has been serving as Minister of Justice since 7 January 2020 in the governments of Chancellors Sebastian Kurz, Alexander Schallenberg and Karl Nehammer.[1]

Early life, education, and early career

Born in Tuzla, Zadić fled to Austria with her parents in 1994 during the Bosnian War and the family settled in Vienna. She has been described as a Muslim, but denies any religious affiliation herself.[2][3]

She studied law at the University of Vienna and at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Piacenza before getting a Fulbright scholarship for a postgraduate law degree at Columbia University in New York.[4] While being a student, she worked as a junior legal researcher at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Vienna and as an intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.[3] She was also a competitive volleyball player and fitness coach.[4]

Before entering politics, Zadić worked for six years as a senior associate at the Vienna office of London-headquartered multinational law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer,[3] specialising in human rights issues.[2]

Political career

In 2017 she joined the Pilz list, from 2018 the Jetzt list and was elected to the National Council in the 2017 parliamentary elections. In 2019 she briefly became a non-party member of the National Council before being elected as a member of the Green Party in that year's election.[5]

On 7 January 2020, Zadić, along with three other Greens, was sworn in by Austria's president Alexander Van der Bellen to serve in the Sebastian Kurz coalition government as Minister of Justice pursuant to the coalition agreement of Kurz's ÖVP with the Greens, led by Werner Kogler, who serves as Vice Chancellor.[1]

Zadić remained in the same role when Alexander Schallenberg set up a new government following Kurz's resignation in October 2021.[6]

Defamation case

On social media, Zadić shared a photograph in which a member of a Burschenschaft was seen giving a Nazi salute, with the comment "No tolerance for neo-Nazis, fascists and racists". In November 2019, she was found guilty of defamation and fined 700 euros by a criminal court in Vienna. While Zadić chose not to appeal the conviction further, her party colleague Karl Öllinger who was found guilty in a related case successfully appealed against his verdict in 2021.[7][8][9]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alma Zadić.
  1. 1 2 red, ORF at/Agenturen (2019-12-31). "Alma Zadic: Von JETZT ins Justizministerium". news.ORF.at (in German). Retrieved 2020-01-09.
  2. 1 2 "Austria minister Alma Zadic targeted by web hate speech". BBC. 9 January 2020. Retrieved 2020-01-23.
  3. 1 2 3 "Alma Zadic: The refugee who became a government minister". infomigrants.net. 14 January 2020. Retrieved 2020-01-23.
  4. 1 2 Katrin Bennhold (February 7, 2020), A Onetime ‘Refugee Child’ Takes On Austria’s Far Right New York Times.
  5. ↑ "JETZT-Mandatarin Zadic kandidiert für Grüne". news.ORF.at (in German). 2019-07-02. Retrieved 2020-01-09.
  6. ↑ "Grüne Hauptdarstellerin auf Bühnenpause". Wiener Zeitung (in German). 11 October 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  7. ↑ "Grünen-Abgeordnete Zadic wegen übler Nachrede verurteilt". Wiener Zeitung (in German). 14 November 2019. Retrieved 2020-01-23.
  8. ↑ "Üble Nachrede: Grünen-Abgeordnete Zadic muss 700 Euro zahlen". vienna.at (in German). 14 November 2019. Retrieved 2020-01-23.
  9. ↑ "Hitlergruß-Affäre: Erfolg für Öllinger". Die Presse (in German). 23 June 2021. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
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