German court convicts man over deadly 2014 attack in Syria

BERLIN (AP) — A German court has convicted a Palestinian man from Syria of a war crime and murder for launching a grenade into a crowd of civilians waiting for food in Damascus in 2014. He was sentenced to life in prison. The 55-year-old was arrested in 2021 in Berlin, where he had been living as a refugee. The German capital’s district court found Thursday that the defendant launched a grenade from an anti-tank weapon into the crowd, killing four people and seriously wounding two others. It said that he was the commander of a checkpoint for a Palestinian group and was supposed to be overseeing a distribution of food packages by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.