Dimitrijević, Dragutin

Dragutin Dimitrijević, byname Apis (“Holy Bull”), (born August 17, 1876, Belgrade, Serbia—died June 27, 1917, Thessaloníki, Greece), Serbian army officer and conspirator, leader of the Serbian secret society Crna Ruka (“Black Hand”).

A young army officer and already a member of the Serbian general staff, Dimitrijević in 1901 initiated an officers’ conspiracy to assassinate the unpopular king Alexander Obrenović. The plan was finally carried out in June 1903. Soon thereafter the conspirators succeeded in bringing the army under their control. As a professor of tactics at the military academy, Dimitrijević exerted considerable influence over his students, and he fostered Serbian nationalistic activity abroad. More significantly, he was also a founding member (1911) and inspirational leader of the nationalistic secret society Ujedinjenje ili Smrt (“Union or Death”), better known as the Black Hand, which sought to create a Greater Serbia through the use of violence. Dimitrijević is considered to have played an important role in plotting the assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo (June 28, 1914), which touched off World War I.

In 1913 Dimitrijević had been appointed chief of general staff intelligence in the Serbian army, and in 1916 he won promotion to colonel. Soon afterward, however, the Black Hand society was marked for elimination by the Serbian premier Nikola Pašić, and in May 1917 Dimitrijević was sentenced to death with six other officers and was executed. He was exonerated of all charges at a staged retrial at Belgrade in 1953.