Princip was arrested immediately after the assassination and died in captivity a few months before the war ended in what is now the Czech Republic. World War I would eventually cost some 14 million lives, including 5 million civilians and 9 million military personnel. Milorad Dodik, a Bosnian Serb leader present at the monument unveiling said that the statue's inauguration amounted to "fighting for freedom today." Sarajevo last year marked 100 years since the assassination, but Serbian and Bosnian Serb leaders shunned the event on account of Princip's divisive legacy. At the outbreak of World War I, most Muslims and Croats preferred to stay a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Serbs in Bosnia regard Princip as a hero, while the nation's Croats and Muslims widely view him as a killer and nationalist who sought to have Bosnia occupied by Serbia. Princip's legacy has long been a source of controversy in the Balkans, a region still sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines, and which emerged from an ethnically fueled war in the 1990s that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The Ottoman Empire, Britain and later Italy and the United States also joined the fighting. Princip, a Serbian nationalist opposed to the Austrian-Hungarian empire's occupation of his country, shot dead Ferdinand, heir to the imperial throne, on Jin Sarajevo, precipitating the chain of events that sent Europe tumbling into World War I.Īustria held Serbia responsible for the assassination of the Archduke, and with the support of Germany, Austria attacked Serbia, whose allies, Russia and France, were soon entangled in the conflict. On the day of the assassination, abrinovi threw a bomb that missed the car carrying the Archduke and his wife. On the morning of June 28, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie arrived in the city of Sarajevo. Nedeljko abrinovi ( Serbian Cyrillic: 20 January 1895 23 January 1916) was one of the Young Bosnian conspirators who planned the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914. The group prepared for their encounter by arming themselves with bombs and guns. To the many outside of Serbia who view Princip as a terrorist, Nikolic said, "others can think what they want." Princip’s group did not like this program because it would have made it even more difficult to unite Bosnia with Serbia. ![]() "Gavrilo Princip was a hero, a symbol of the idea of freedom, the assassin of tyrants and the carrier of the European idea of liberation from slavery," Nikolic told the crowd. ![]() "Today, we are not afraid of the truth," Nikolic said. Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic described Princip as a freedom fighter and a hero. ![]() Gavrilo Princip, whose two-meter bronze likeness was unveiled before a crowd of hundreds in central Belgrade still fuels controversy in the ethnically-divided Balkans. Serbia on Sunday inaugurated a monument to the man whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ignited World War I.
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