Dhaka – Bangladesh’s Speaker of Parliament, Hafiz Uddin Ahmad, has departed for Tehran to attend the funeral prayers of Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on Iran in February.
Ahmad, a valiant freedom fighter from Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War and recipient of the Bir Bikram honour, left Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Thursday morning.
The state funeral for the late Supreme Leader will take place from July 4 to 9. He will be buried at the Imam Reza Shrine in his hometown of Mashhad, according to Iran’s state media.
The burial, initially scheduled for March but postponed as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran dragged on, will follow three days of funeral ceremonies in Tehran starting July 4, with additional observances in the holy city of Qom on July 7.
According to the official schedule, Khamenei’s body will lie in state for three days at Tehran’s Mosalla prayer complex, followed by a major public funeral procession through the capital from July 4 to 7.
The ceremonies will then move to Qom on July 7. The schedule also includes symbolic ceremonies in Najaf and Karbala in Iraq before the remains are returned to Iran for burial.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was born on April 19, 1939, in Mashhad, northeastern Iran. He was killed on February 28, 2026, at the age of 86, in the US-Israeli attack.
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he played a significant role in shaping Iran’s new political system. In 1980, he briefly served as the country’s defence minister. After the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, he took on the responsibility of overseeing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was later elected President of Iran.
Following the death of Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, Iran’s Assembly of Experts elected Khamenei as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.
Speaker Ahmad is scheduled to return home on July 4 after attending the initial phase of the funeral ceremonies.
