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. 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 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. 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. 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.

Source: The Local September 21, 2017 06:22 UTC