Germany jails three Syrians over Daesh ‘sleeper cell’

Two defendants hiding their faces, sit in the courtroom of a Berlin court. Two Syrians have gone on trial in Berlin on allegations they fought with terrorist organizations in their home country. (AP)

BERLIN: German court on Monday sentenced three Syrians to years-long jail terms for belonging to a Daesh “sleeper cell” that has been linked to the Paris attackers, local media said.
The oldest of the accused, identified as 27-year-old Mohamed A., was given the longest sentence of six-and-a-half years by Hamburg’s higher regional court, German news agency DPA and public broadcaster NDR reported.
His 19- and 20-year-old co-accused, minors at the time of the acts, received prison terms of three and a half years each.
Judges at the Hamburg court said Daesh had arranged for the trio to travel from Syria to Germany in 2015, where they were told to await orders for an attack.
No evidence was found however of concrete plans for a terror plot.
To reach Germany, the men traveled via Turkey and Greece — using the same route as hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria at the time.
The accused were given fake passports, cash and mobile phones from Daesh, according to the court, and used the same smuggling network as the assailants who had carried out the Daesh-claimed attacks in Paris in 2015 that left 130 people dead.
There were “many parallels” between the German “sleeper cell” and the Paris cell, the presiding judge said, according to NDR.
The three Syrians were arrested at different refugee shelters in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein in 2016.
The 27-year-old had admitted during the trial last month that he was a member of Daesh. His co-accused made no confessions.