Petar Baćović

Who is Petar Baćović?

Petar Baćović was a Bosnian Serb reserve officer, lawyer, and Chetnik commander of eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina within occupied Yugoslavia during the Second World War.

Beginning in the summer of 1941 until April 1942, he headed the Cabinet of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Milan Nedić's puppet Government of National Salvation in Belgrade. In July 1942, Baćović was appointed by Chetnik movement leader Draža Mihailović and his Supreme Command as the commander of the "Chetnik Operational Units in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina" during which Baćović collaborated with the Italians and Germans in actions against the Yugoslav Partisans.

He and other Chetnik commanders carried out numerous massacres against the Bosnian Muslim and Catholic civilian population and those sympathetic to the Partisan movement. He was captured near Banja Luka by elements of the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia along with Chetnik leaders Pavle Đurišić and Zaharije Ostojić, and Chetnik ideologue Dragiša Vasić after an apparent trap was set. According to some sources, Baćović and the others were taken to the Jasenovac concentration camp, where they were killed.