Čengić's fight for Bosniaks has lasted for over three decades

Hasan Čengić is the new president of the Assembly of the Islamic Community in BiH! This was decided on Saturday by secret ballot at the Assembly session in Sarajevo. Čengić was elected for a four-year term with 64 votes, while his opponent Muamer Terzić from Travnik received 16 votes. One vote was invalid, writes the BiH news agency Patria.

- Terzić could also have been the president of the Assembly according to all criteria. He is a man with respectable experience. It is a special honor to be elected when you have such an opponent – Čengić said about Muamer Terzić.

Hasan Čengić was born on August 30, 1957, in Foča. He graduated from Gazi Husrev-beg Madrasa and then from the Faculty of Islamic Sciences in Sarajevo.

Initially, he worked as an imam in Stolac and Zagreb, but he was always very actively involved in Bosniak politics, as one of the more prominent intellectuals.

Together with the future first president of the Presidency of the independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović, and a group of Muslim intellectuals, he found himself on the defendant's bench in the "Sarajevo Trial" in 1983. It was the first, but not the last, attempt by the authorities to suppress Čengić.

The "Sarajevo Trial" is the most famous political trial in the former Yugoslavia from that time to the present day, conducted against Muslim intellectuals, whom the then authorities accused of wanting to create an Islamic state in BiH.

Čengić is also one of the founders of the strongest Bosniak party, SDA. During the aggression against BiH, he was, along with the Commander of the Supreme Staff of the Army of BiH, Alija Izetbegović, one of the key figures in the country's defense against the enemy.

- The time has come for SDA to regain its role (as in the time of Alija Izetbegović), but the party must make certain turns – Čengić criticized two years ago, adding that SDA was the first democratic party in BiH, even when communism was functioning in Yugoslavia.

Even after the conflict in BiH ended in 1995, Čengić was often targeted by domestic and foreign judicial institutions, but they never managed to prove any indictment against him.

Before being elected president, he was a member of the Assembly of the Islamic Community for two terms, writes NAP.