Vasiljković, who had served in the
Australian Army, had returned to Yugoslavia in 1990 during the Croatian independence movement, eventually being hired as an instructor for volunteers in the summer of 1991. At this time,
Belgrade daily
Politika published a comic book named
The Demons Return that featured the Kninjas fighting the Croats with
martial arts. The unit, deemed elite, was a special unit that answered in part to Knin police chief
Milan Martić. According to Martić himself, he was supplied of equipment and weapons mostly from the Serbian government. It became the special forces of the RSK Interior Ministry. Members of the unit were involved in the December 1991
Bruška massacre. Veterans of the unit later joined the
Special Operations Unit of the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Vasiljković served a fifteen-year prison sentence for war crimes by the Croatian court in Split. He was released from prison on March 28, 2020. The emblem was a customized
Serbian cross, with blue background and inverted
firesteels. In the 257 operations conducted by the Kninjas, only one out of the 64 soldiers died due to a direct explosion by a grenade on his head and another four were injured. == Cultural impact ==