Berlin – A Syrian refugee went on trial in Germany on Thursday on charges of involvement in killings carried out by Islamic State militants in Syria, including beheadings, prosecutors said.
The 33-year-old defendant appeared before the Higher Regional Court in Duesseldorf, accused of membership in a foreign terrorist organisation and complicity in murder, as reported by France Press.
According to prosecutors, the man was a member of an Islamic State unit between 2014 and 2017 in eastern Syria, where he took part in patrols around the town of al-Kashkiyah in Deir al-Zor province and acted as a guide for foreign fighters.
Prosecutors said that in August 2014, the unit arrested several men from a local tribe. Two were beheaded immediately, while others were abused and tortured.
The defendant is suspected of facilitating the killings by securing the area while armed with a Kalashnikov rifle. Other detainees were transferred the following day to another location, where some were also killed, prosecutors said.
German authorities arrested the suspect in January 2025 in Monheim am Rhein in western Germany, where he had been living. The trial is expected to continue until late March.
Germany has increasingly used the principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed during Syria’s war.
In June last year, a German court sentenced a Syrian doctor to life in prison for crimes against opponents of the former Syrian government, Reuters reported.
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The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court found Alaa Mousa guilty after a trial lasting more than three years, during which the court heard testimony from around 50 witnesses, victims and experts.
Mousa was convicted of torturing detainees while working at military hospitals in Homs and Damascus in 2011 and 2012. He had arrived in Germany in 2015 and was arrested in 2020 after Syrian refugees identified him.
