Background
Mehmed Alajbegović was born in Bihać on 7 May 1906, to a bey family. Both his father and grandfather had been mayors of Bihać.
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Mehmed Alajbegovic
Edit ProfileEducation
Alajbegović finished elementary school and high school in the town and moved to Zagreb in 1928, where he studied law at the University of Zagreb. He went on to study Sharia law at the University of Algiers, from which he graduated in 1940.
Career
He was executed by Yugoslav authorities following the war. He received his doctorate in 1934. During his studies, he visited many foreign cities and spent a great deal of time in Paris, where he worked as a Croatian-language teacher.
After receiving his doctorate, Alajbegović was named judge at the district court of Prozor.
Beginning in 1938, he was also a judge and secretary at the Administrative Court of Zagreb. Alajbegović was one of the participants in establishment, member and a committeeman, of Društvo bosansko-hercegovačkih Hrvata u Zagrebu (Society of the Bosnia-Herzegovinian Croats in Zagreb) which was established in March 1939.
Following the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) in April 1941, Alajbegović left his role as professor of Islamic studies at the University of Zagreb and became a diplomat. In August 1941, he became a secretary in the NDH Foreign Ministry.
On 27 January 1942, Alajbegović was named Consul to the German Reich in Munich.
He held this position until 11 October 1943, when Poglavnik Ante Pavelić made him Minister of Welfare for Perished Lands. Most were fleeing Chetnik atrocities in eastern Bosnia, Herzegovina and the Sandžak. On 5 May 1944 Alajbegović was named Foreign Minister.
On 18 and 19 September 1944, Alajbegović accompanied Pavelić on a diplomatic visit to Berlin and met with German leader Adolf Hitler.
In the last months of, he attempted to reconcile nationalist factions fighting in occupied Yugoslavia, such as the Montenegrin separatist leader Sekula Drljević, Slovene collaborationist leader Leon Rupnik and Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović, in order to form an anti-communist coalition to combat the powerful Yugoslav Partisans and the Red Army. Alajbegović remained Foreign Minister until 6 May 1945, when he fled Zagreb together with other high-ranking NDH officials.
He fled Yugoslavia and sought sanctuary in Krumpendorf, Austria. He then moved to Salzburg, where he was arrested by Allied forces on 6 September 1945.
He was briefly detained in a prisoner-of-war camp in Glasenbach.
Alajbegović was extradited to Yugoslavia three days later, on 9 September. While being interrogated by Yugoslav intelligence agents, he was asked why he joined the Ustašest He responded, "the main motive that led me to join them was that they had an idea for a Croatian state.
A great influence on me was made by cognition about the right of the Croatian people to have a state, and other motives were ignored." Alajbegović was charged with various crimes and tried by the Supreme Court of the People"s Republic of Croatia in May 1947.
He was found guilty of collaboration and sentenced to death on 7 June 1947 and executed the same day.
