of either the Yugoslav secret police or rivals in the Croatian émigré community. Early life Vjekoslav Luburić was born into a Herzegovinian Croat family in the village of Humac, near Ljubuški, on 6 March 1914. He was the third child of Ljubomir Luburić, a bank clerk, and Marija Soldo, a homemaker. The couple had another son, Dragutin, and two daughters, Mira and Olga. Luburić was a devout and practicing Roman Catholic. In December 1918, his father was shot by a police officer while smuggling tobacco and died of blood loss. Following his father's death, Luburić came to "detest and resent Serbs and the Serbian monarchy", the historian Cathie Carmichael writes. Shortly thereafter, Luburić's sister Olga committed suicide by jumping into the Trebižat River after their mother forbade her from marrying a Muslim. Following the deaths of Luburić's father and sister, his mother found work in a tobacco factory to provide for her remaining children. She soon married a man named Jozo Tambić, with whom she had three more children. Luburić's half-siblings, born of his mother's second marriage, were named Zora, Nada and Tomislav. Luburić completed his primary education in Ljubuški, before relocating to Mostar to attend secondary school. There, he began associating with Croatian nationalist youths. He became increasingly aggressive towards his teachers and peers, and often truanted. Luburić’s first encounter with law enforcement occurred on 7 September 1929, when he was arrested for vagrancy and sentenced to two days’ imprisonment by a Mostar court. In his senior year, Luburić dropped out of high school to work in the Mostar public stock exchange. In 1931, he joined the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist and ultra-nationalist movement committed to the destruction of Yugoslavia and the establishment of Greater Croatia. The same year, he was arrested for the embezzlement of funds belonging to the exchange. On 5 December, Luburić was sentenced to five months in prison for embezzlement. Shortly thereafter, he escaped captivity and made it as far as the Albanian–Yugoslav border before being recaptured. Upon release, Luburić relocated to northern Croatia, and then to Subotica, where he surreptitiously crossed the Hungarian–Yugoslav border. Luburić first rendezvoused with the Croatian émigré community in Budapest before relocating to an Ustaše training camp called Janka-Puszta. Situated close to the Yugoslav frontier, Janka-Puszta was one of several Ustaše training camps established in Hungary and Italy, whose governments were sympathetic to the Ustaše cause and had territorial aspirations