Geneva: Switzerland has ordered a returned recruit of the Islamic State group to do 600 hours of community service and will not send him to prison, in the country’s first sentencing of a foreign jihadist.
Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber’s ruling went into effect this week, he told public broadcaster RTS.
The 30-year-old, a recent convert to Islam, from the western Swiss canton of Vaud, had travelled to Syria late last year to join an IS training camp.
The man said he had been indoctrinated over internet. “I was new to Islam... The videos I saw and the discussions I had online made me feel like I had to go there,” he said.
After two weeks in the training camp, however, he asked to leave, only to be jailed by the militant group, which held him for 54 days, RTS reported.
The man, who has been cooperating with authorities and claims to have cut all ties with the jihadist group, was sentenced under a Swiss law against taking part in criminal organisations and under a military law against fighting for a foreign army.
