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.
Germany jails three Syrians over Daesh ‘sleeper cell’
Germany jails three Syrians over Daesh ‘sleeper cell’
More than 9,000 flights canceled as major winter storm bears down across much of US
- “Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are spreading into the area and will remain in place into Monday,” the agency said on X
DALLAS: More than 9,000 flights across the US set to take off over the weekend have been canceled as a major storm expected to wreak havoc across much of the country threatens to knock out power for days and snarl major roadways.
Roughly 140 million people were under a winter storm warning from New Mexico to New England.
The National Weather Service forecast warns of widespread heavy snow and a band of catastrophic ice stretching from east Texas to North Carolina.
Forecasters say damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane.
Ice and sleet that hit northern Texas overnight were moving toward the central part of the state on Saturday, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said.
“Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are spreading into the area and will remain in place into Monday,” the agency said on X.
Low temperatures will be mostly in the single digits for the next few nights, with wind chills as low as minus 24 Celsius.
About 68,000 power outages were reported across the country at 8 a.m. ET, about 27,600 of them in Texas. Snow and sleet continued to fall in Oklahoma.
After sweeping through the South, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping about a foot of snow from Washington through New York and Boston, the weather service predicted.
Temperatures reached minus 34 C just before dawn in rural Lewis County and other parts of upstate New York after days of heavy snow.
Governors in more than a dozen states sounded the alarm about the turbulent weather ahead, declaring emergencies or urging people to stay home.
