SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

German court jails Syrian refugee over UN kidnapping

A German court on Wednesday sentenced a Syrian refugee to three-and-a-half years in prison over the kidnapping of a UN peacekeeper, finding him guilty of complicity in a war crime.

German court jails Syrian refugee over UN kidnapping
File photo: DPA.

Twenty-six-year-old Suliman al-S. was arrested in January 2016, becoming the first asylum seeker in Germany to face charges over alleged war crimes committed in Syria.

The court in the southwestern city of Stuttgart found that while the suspect did not take part in the 2013 abduction of a Canadian UN observer, he aided and abetted the kidnappers by acting as a guard.

The peacekeeper with the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), who was stationed in the Golan Heights but abducted in Damascus, managed to free himself after eight months in captivity.

Prosecutors had sought a seven-year sentence for Suliman al-S., who arrived in Germany in 2014.

The judges said they had not seen conclusive proof that the suspect belonged to a branch of the Al-Nusra Front jihadist group, as alleged by the prosecution.

The peacekeeper's identity was never revealed by German prosecutors, but the UN said in 2013 that Carl Campeau, a Canadian legal advisor, was abducted on February 17 as he drove through a Damascus suburb.

He was freed in October, without a ransom being paid, according to the UN.

German federal prosecutors have opened over a dozen investigations concerning alleged war crimes in Syria or Iraq, alongside dozens of cases of suspected membership in jihadist groups.

The investigations have gained momentum with the arrival of more than one million asylum seekers since 2015, including hundreds of thousands from Syria and Iraq.

In July 2016, in the first such conviction, a German jihadist was sentenced to two years in prison on war crimes charges after posing for pictures in Syria with the severed and impaled heads of two government soldiers.

FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

SHOW COMMENTS