Iraqi sentenced to 70 months for Islamic State activities

The court did not agree that he should be committed to a mental institution © Ti-press

An Iraqi citizen who has been living in Switzerland on and off for 22 years has been found guilty of setting up a network of terror sympathisers and inciting his wife to commit a suicide attack in Lebanon.  

The Federal Criminal Court sentenced the 52-year-old man to five years and 10 months in prison. The trial was held over two days in early September and the decision was made public on Thursday. 

The court did not grant the request of the Office of the Attorney General to commit the man to a mental institution. It was the first such request concerning someone involved in Islamic terrorism.  

The man was accused of having acted on numerous occasions between 2016 and 2017 from Switzerland on behalf of the Islamic State. He was arrested in 2017 at an asylum centre and has been detained on security grounds since then. Violent videos attributed to the Islamic State were found in his home and around 26,000 incriminating messages on the internet were identified.  

He was previously sentenced for domestic violence for having tried to suffocate his ex-wife when she wanted to separate from him.