Sekula Drljević

Sekula Drljević
Sekula Drljević, c. 1925
Member of the National Assembly
In office 1925–1927
Constituency	Kolašin
Montenegrin Minister of Finance
In office 6 June 1912 – 25 April 1913
Preceded by	Filip Jergović
Succeeded by	Risto Popović
Personal details
Born	7 September 1884 Ravno, Kolašin, Montenegro
Died	10 November 1945(1945-11-10) (aged 61) Judenburg, Austria
Political party	Montenegrin Federalist Party
Alma mater	University of Zagreb
Occupation	Politician, lawyer

Sekula Drljević (7 September 1884 – 10 November 1945) was a Montenegrin lawyer and separatist politician who collaborated with the Italian military occupation authorities in Montenegro during World War II.

Born in the town of Kolašin, he earned a doctorate degree in law and became the Minister of Justice and Finance in the Kingdom of Montenegro before the outbreak of World War I. During the interwar period, he was a leading member of the "Greens" (zelenaši), a Montenegrin separatist movement. A proponent of the theory that Montenegrins were an ethnic group distinct from Serbs, he also founded and became the leader of the Montenegrin Federalist Party.

Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Drljević began cooperating with the Italian authorities occupying Montenegro. In July, he proclaimed the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Montenegro, but his attempt to establish an Axis-aligned puppet state triggered an immediate uprising. That September, Italian authorities sent him to an internment camp in Italy after the oubreak of an anti-fascist revolt. Drljević escaped the camp several months later and made his way into the German-held half of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). In the summer of 1944, he created the Montenegrin State Council in Zagreb.

Drljević moved back to Montenegro in 1945 and agreed to the formation of the Montenegrin National Army with Chetnik commander Pavle Đurišić. Đurišić and several other Chetnik commanders were later ambushed and murdered on behalf of Drljević and the NDH. Đurišić's men later joined Drljević's Montenegrin National Army and withdrew with him towards the Austrian border. In mid-1945, Drljević crossed over into Austria with his wife, and the two ended up in a camp for displaced persons in Judenburg, where they were killed by Chetnik agents seeking to avenge Đurišić's death.