A court in Austria convicted an asylum seeker from Syria to life imprisonment for committing war crimes. The man was found guilty of killing 20 people in Syria.
The 27-year-old man, whose name was not revealed, was sentenced to life in jail for shooting at unarmed and wounded soldiers after a battle in the city of Homs. Killing injured soldiers is prohibited under the Geneva Convention.
The sentence was given by a court in Innsbruck and it is believed that this was the first time when a case involving war crimes in Syria was tried in Austria.
The man, who was arrested in western Austria in June, is a stateless Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp in Homs. He had denied all the charges and his lawyers said that they are going to appeal the conviction.
According to previous publications in local media, he has told other people in the refugee shelter that he has shot dead government soldiers while fighting with an Islamist rebel group called the Farouq Brigade, linked to the Free Syrian Army. Officials had previously commented that qualified as terrorism and could be prosecuted under international counter-terrorism agreements.
