3. When Serbia Was a Full-Blown State Sponsor of Terrorism
The Black Hand was established in 1911 to resume the Serb campaign against Austria-Hungary, oversee its activities, and establish and coordinate nationalist revolutionary cells in Bosnia. The organization trained guerrillas, saboteurs, propagandists, and assassins, and sent them into Austria-Hungary to destabilize it, and stir up nationalist resentment among its Serbian subjects.
Serbia became a full-blown state sponsor of terrorism. The Black Hand’s leadership was composed primarily of high-ranking Serbian officials and army officers, including the crown prince. The Serbian government was kept well informed of the group’s terrorist activities. By 1914, Apis was a colonel in charge of Serbia’s military intelligence and was the Black Hand’s primary mover and shaker. That year, he hatched a plot for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.