Danilo
Ilic was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in
1891. He attended the State Teachers' College in Sarajevo and for
a while taught at a school in Bosnia. In 1913 Ilic moved to Belgrade
where he became a journalist and a member of the Black
Hand secret society.
Ilic returned to Sarajevo in 1914 where he worked as editor of a local
Serb newspaper. He began recruiting young men into the Black
Hand group and that summer agreed to help Gavrilo
Princip, Nedjelko Cabrinovic,
and Trifko Grabez to assassinate Archduke
Franz Ferdinand.
On Sunday, 28th June, 1914, Franz Ferdinand
and Sophie von Chotkovato
were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip.
Princip and Nedjelko Cabrinovic were
captured and interrogated by the police. They eventually gave the
names of their fellow conspirators. Muhamed
Mehmedbasic managed to escape to Serbia but Ilic, Veljko
Cubrilovic, Vaso Cubrilovic,
Cvijetko Popovic and Misko
Jovanovic 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
Cabrinovic, Gavrilo Princip and Trifko
Grabez therefore received the maximum penalty of twenty years,
whereas Vaso Cubrilovic got 16 years
and Cvijetko Popovic 13 years. Danilo
Ilic, Veljko Cubrilovic and Misko
Jovanovic, who helped the assassins kill the royal couple, were
executed on 3rd February, 1915.
