Germany: Man convicted of membership in Islamic State group

BERLIN – A German court has convicted a German-Tunisian man of membership in the Islamic State group and another extremist organization.

The Stuttgart state court sentenced the 30-year-old man to two years and five months in prison on Wednesday.

The court said he travelled to Syria in late 2013 to join the Islamic State group and received military training, but left IS in February 2014 and joined another group, Junud al-Sham.

The court says the man spent a couple of months as a fighter and paramedic before returning to Germany, where he was in custody for the past year.

Judges ordered his release after taking into account time he spent jailed in Tunisia from June 2015 until January 2018 while accused of Islamic State membership.