Vaso Čubrilović

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vaso Čubrilović was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1897. He was a student in Sarajevo, when Danilo Ilić recruited him and his friend, Cvjetko Popović, to help assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His brother, Veljko Čubrilović, was also involved in the plot.

On Sunday, 28 June 1914, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip. Princip and Nedeljko Čabrinović were captured and interogated by the police. They eventually gave the names of their fellow conspirators. Muhamed Mehmedbašić who managed to escape to Serbia, but Vaso Čubrilović, Danilo Ilić, Veljko Čubrilović, Cvjetko Popović and Miško Jovanović were arrested and charged with treason and murder.

Eight of the men charged with treason and the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand were found guilty. Under Austro-Hungarian law, capital punishment could not be imposed on someone who was under the age of twenty when they had committed the crime. Nedjelko Čabrinović, Gavrilo Princip and Trifko Grabež therefore received the maximum penalty of twenty years. Vaso Čubrilović got sixteen years and Cvjetko Popović thirteen years. Miško Jovanović, Danilo Ilić and Veljko Čubrilović, who helped the assassins kill the royal couple, were executed on 3 February 1915.

Vaso Čubrilović was released when the Allies defeated the Central Powers in November 1918. He became a teacher in Sarajevo and went on to become a university professor in Belgrade. After World War II, Vaso Čubrilović served as Minister of Forests in Yugoslavia's government. He died in 1990.