Former refugee child becomes mayor in Bihac - a comeback!

Former refugee child becomes mayor in Bihac - a comeback!

Biberach, Deutschland - Waltraud Riek, a former SPD city councilor in Biberach, housed a Bosnian mother, Fatima, and her son Esmir in the 1990s. The two fled before the war and lived in a small apartment renovated by Riek for several years. In 1998 Fatima and Esmir returned to Bihac, Bosnia, which initially stopped contact. Bihac has around 61,000 inhabitants today and is located in the northwest of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2023 Riek Bihac visited and met Fatima again; Esmir now lives in Munich.

At Riek's visit, election posters were hung in Bihac and Fatima recognized Elvedin Sedic, who is the mayor and former classmate of Esmir. According to a report by schwaebische.de Years in Biberach. His escape took him to Bad Buchau with his mother and two sisters in 1993 before the family moved to Biberach two years later. Sedic attended the Mali main and secondary school until 1997 when they returned to Bosnia.

career and return to Bihac

in Biberach was Sedic active in football at FC Wacker and in the youth fire brigade. Despite the difficult fresh start in Bosnia, where everything was destroyed by the war, Sedic completed a middle school and graduated in 2004 at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bihac. In 2006 he obtained his master at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. By 2020 he worked as a university assistant in Bihac before he was elected to the city council. In 2022 he was elected mayor of Bihac and again in 2024, with his term running until 2028. Sedic is also a family man, married since 2009 and father of four daughters aged 14, 11, 6 and 2 years.

In another report by Bihac.org is mentioned, that Mayor Sedic recently discussed the current security situation in Bihac and the challenges of the migrant crisis with Laszlo Sticz, the General of the Eufor. During the conversation, Sedic informed about the state of migration and the ongoing city projects, including infrastructural and security -relevant initiatives. In addition, the possibilities of such help for BIHAC were discussed, especially in crisis situations. A central point was the strategy to cope with the migration at the Bosnia and Herzegovina level, which aims to distribute the loads evenly and prevent a recurrence of crises.