Sulejman Tihić, SDA President, to be laid to rest today

The coffin with the body of Sulejman Tihić, Deputy Speaker of the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, will be displayed in the building of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH in Sarajevo today at nine o'clock.

The protocol for the final farewell of Sulejman Tihić, who passed away the night before last at 7:20 PM at the University Clinical Center Sarajevo after a long and serious illness, provides for a guard of honor to stand by the coffin until 11 AM, when a memorial service is scheduled to be held in the large hall of the BiH Parliament.

Simultaneously, a book of condolences will be open until the start of the memorial service.

The memorial service for Tihić, who was also the president of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), will be addressed by the Chairman of the Presidency of BiH Bakir Izetbegović, Chairman of the House of Peoples of the PA BiH Dragan Čović, Deputy Chairman of the House of Peoples Staša Košarac, President of the SDA Caucus in the PA BiH and SDA Vice President Asim Sarajlić, and SDA Vice President Adil Osmanović.

The coffin will be carried out to the plateau in front of the PA BiH at noon, when the funeral prayer will be performed, led by the Rais al-Ulama of the Islamic Community in BiH Husein ef. Kavazović.

The procession with Tihić's coffin will then proceed to Bosanski Šamac, where the funeral prayer will be performed at 4:10 PM and the burial will take place in the courtyard of the White Mosque.

Tihić will be buried in his native Bosanski Šamac according to his own wish, as announced by the SDA, of which he was president from 2001.

Sulejman Tihić was born in 1951, graduated from the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo in 1975, and has been a member of the SDA since its founding in 1990. During the war in BiH, he passed through several camps in BiH and Serbia. He was appointed head of the consular department of the BiH embassy in Bonn, Germany.

During the 2002-2006 mandate, he served as a member of the Presidency of BiH. In the post-war period, he also served as a representative and deputy speaker of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska.