The man named, Aria Ladjevardi, a 21-year old German national was found guilty of war crimes in a Frankfurt regional court. Ladjevardi was found in violation of international humanitarian law for treating two Syrian army soldiers "in a degrading and humiliating manner."
The unidentified militant group, to which Ladjevardi is said to have belonged, raided a Syrian army checkpoint between March 8 and April 16, 2014 in the town of Binnish located in the Idlib province. The militants captured and later executed two servicemen.
In a statement read by the court on 12th July, during the fighting they beheaded the victims and spiked their heads on metal rods and then put them on public display.
German Jihadi Aria Ladjevardi/Abdul Haqq got two years in prison. Posed with heads in Syria. https://t.co/xfNdAkZUQ8 pic.twitter.com/PVNLYbC9X4
— Björn Stritzel (@bjoernstritzel) 12 July 2016
The man, who is believed to have spent at least three weeks within the group ranks after he left Germany for Syria in spring 2014, was subsequently photographed along with a fellow jihadist identified as Vedat V. at the scene who posted one of the images on Facebook for everybody to see.
"The accused posed with the dismembered heads and let himself be photographed three times, so as to mock and belittle the deceased, whom he considered ‘dishonorable infidels,'" the court statement reads.
Vedat V. has been taking part in Syrian military conflict on the side of the armed opposition fighting Syrian government since 2012.
Ladjevardi, who has been in custody since his arrest by German authorities in Frankfurt area in 2015, denied what happened while saying he was intimidated into posing for the images but his fellow comrades.
"I didn't want to be in the photograph," he told the court at the onset of the proceedings in May. The suspect also denied he was a party to killings saying the mutilated bodies were discovered by a local villager who then drew attention of other residents. He alleged that as onlookers started taking pictures of themselves with the 'find', he was forced to follow the suit.
"We were in a war zone. I did what I had to do in the situation," he said, claiming he never knew the images would surface on social media.
Ladjevardi claimed that the reason why he wanted to join a jihadist group was simply because he wanted to help people, after he stopped drinking alcohol, smoking cannabis and turning his own life around.
