On 28 June 1914, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated, shot at close range from a crowded sidewalk while visiting Sarajevo, the provincial capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, occupied by Austria-Hungary since 1878 and formally annexed since 1908. The shooter, Gavrilo Princip, a teenage Bosnian Serb member of Mlada Bosna an organisation of Serbs, Croats and Muslims dedicated to free Bosnia of Austria-Hungarian rule and unite all Southern Slavs, was arrested immediately and with him numerous other suspects.