Budapest’s municipal appeals court on Monday sentenced Syrian national Hassan F. to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity committed as a member of the Islamic State terrorist organisation.
In its binding ruling, the appeals court upheld the life sentence imposed by the municipal court of Budapest in December last year, but added that the defendant had committed the crimes as part of a criminal organisation, and removed the possibility of parole.
According to the charges, the man was complicit in at least two killings in Syria in 2015, at least one of which involved a beheading.
He was the commander of an armed unit which controlled an area and kept its residents under terror through executions and torture. When the unit was given a command to occupy a town in Syria, the defendant drew up a “death list” of people rejecting IS and then publicly beheaded the community’s imam. The execution, which the community was forced to watch, was filmed.
The defendant was arrested at Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport in 2018, and was later sentenced for people smuggling and other crimes.
featured image: Hassan F. before the court in November 2019; via Zsolt Szigetváry/MTI