Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, occurred on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip. Princip was one of a group of six assassins (five Serbs and one Bosniak) coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb and a member of the Black Hand secret society. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The assassins' motives were consistent with the
Zvezdan Jovanović the murder of Đinđić and said in a police report that he feels no remorse for killing him. Due to alleged interrogations, beatings and threats against his family, he claims to have been forced to falsely confess. In May 2008, then ICTY-imprisoned Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj compared Jovanović with the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, saying “he would enjoy the same fame and glory that Gavrilo Princip has in Serbian history”. Zvezdan Jovanović Zvezdan Jovanović (; born 19 July 1965), also known as "Zmija" ("Snake") is a Serbian former paramilitary and Commander in the Serbian police's Special Operations