On Thursday, a German court convicted a Syrian Palestinian of war crimes and murder for firing a bomb at a crowd of civilians waiting for food aid in the Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus in 2014.
The court said that the defendant acted out of revenge against the civilians in the area after his 25-year-old nephew was killed by gunmen opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The man was found guilty of a serious war crime, four counts of murder, two attempted murders and bodily harm. According to the court's decision, which can be appealed, the convict will not be eligible for release after 15 years, as is usually the case in Germany.
Civilians in the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees, south of Damascus, were among a crowd waiting for food aid when the man fired a shell at them from an anti-tank weapon, killing seven and seriously wounding three, including a six-year-old boy.
The camp used to be the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. The camp was under siege by the Syrian army and its allies from 2013 to 2018, when the army wrested control of it from Islamist militants.