PARIS, France: A French court on Tuesday sentenced a former member of the Daesh group in Syria, Othman Garrido, to 30 years’ imprisonment for murders committed as part of an organized group. Garrido, a 32-year-old French citizen, was convicted by a special court in Paris at the end of a week-long trial. He was convicted over a September 2015 public execution in Syria of two Iranians, but was acquitted on another charge of being their executioner. His sentence came with a 20-year non-parole period. The Daesh group had attempted in 2014 to create what it called a “caliphate” in Syria, but it ended up being defeated in 2019 by a US-led international coalition. Garrido, during his trial, had portrayed himself as forced to follow Daesh or risk death himself. Some 1,500 French nationals had transited through Iraq and Syria to join the Daesh in the 2010s.