27 Feb 2021
A German court has sentenced 37-year-old Abu Walaa to ten and a half years in prison for his role in trying to radicalise young people and recruit them for the Islamic State terrorist group.
Abu Walaa, whose real name is Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., was originally arrested alongside four other Islamic radicals in 2016 and had come to Germany as an asylum seeker in 2000 after fleeing his native Iraq along with members of his family.
The conviction comes after a nearly four-year trial that began in 2017 but despite the conviction, the lawyer for Walaa has maintained that prosecutors were not able to prove their case fully, Deutsche Welle reports.