Nedeljko Čabrinović

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Nedeljko Čabrinović (Serbian Cyrillic: Недељко Чабриновић) (1895 - January 23, 1916) was a member of the Black Hand society, and one of seven assassins who made a successful attempt on the life of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria.

Born in Sarajevo, Čabrinović spent many of his post-school years as a handyman, before moving to Belgrade and working in a print shop, becoming familiar with anarchist literature. In 1912 he joined the Black Hand, and two years later Dragutin Dimitrijevic, leader of the Black Hand, ordered Čabrinović, Gavrilo Princip and five other conspirators to assassinate Ferdinand, giving them each a gun and two bombs, along with a vial of cyanide (though it has been suggested that the cyanide was either old and ineffective, or that the Black Hand's supplier had deceived them and sold them a different, much weaker poison), telling them to swallow it if they were in danger of being caught.

[edit] The assassination attempt

Note that many different versions of the assassination exist, owing mainly to contradictory reports by witnesses of the time. This version attempts to reconcile as many facts as possible, but is not guaranteed to be totally accurate.

The assassination took place on June 28, 1914. The first assassin had attempted to shoot Ferdinand, but had found himself unable to get a clear shot. Čabrinović hid in an alleyway, and as soon as Ferdinand drove past, he threw his bomb at Ferdinand's car. One account says that Franz Ferdinand saw the bomb approach and in an attempt to protect his wife, the bomb ricocheted off his arm. The bomb then destroyed a following car, wounding its passengers and several crowd members. Čabrinović then swallowed his cyanide and jumped into a nearby river. The cyanide was weak and only made him sick, and the river was shallow (about 4 inches deep), he was beaten by the crowd and then apprehended by the authorities.

Ironically, this failed attempt on Ferdinand's life proved to be a key part in the assassination as Ferdinand insisted on visiting the bomb victims at the local hospital. An error by his driver took them past Princip, who wasted no time in shooting Ferdinand and his wife.

Princip confessed to his crimes, but believed himself a Serbian hero and true nationalist. As he was still a minor, he was not executed, but was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He died in 1916 of tuberculosis.

Josip Novakovich wrote a fictional memoir of Čabrinović, "The Stamp," which was published in Ploughshares in 2002 and included in Novakovich's collection Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust in 2005.