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. To the many outside of Serbia who view Princip as a terrorist, Nikolic said, 'others can think what they want.' '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.