(Reuters) A German court sentenced a Syrian man to life in prison on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes it said he had committed as a leading member of a Hezbollah-backed militia during Syria’s civil war.
The Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart found the 33-year-old man guilty of leading a militia that carried out brutal attacks on Sunni Muslim civilians in his home town of Busra al-Sham in southern Syria. It did not name the man.
In 2013 the militia beat three people with Kalashnikovs and handed them over to the military intelligence of Syria’s then-president Bashar al-Assad, which tortured them and kept them in appalling conditions, the court found.
