A man who is said to have fired a grenade into a crowd in the Syrian capital Damascus in 2014 may soon have to face a court in Berlin.
The federal prosecutor brought charges of war crimes in the Court of Appeal, as the Karlsruhe authorities announced on Thursday. The indictment has yet to be cleared.
According to investigators, at least seven people were killed in the attack in a district that had emerged from a Palestinian refugee camp, all of them civilians. At least three were injured, some seriously, including a six-year-old child.
The victims were waiting in a square for food packages to be handed out by a United Nations aid agency. The grenade was fired from an anti-tank weapon, it said.
The stateless man, who is accused of seven murders, among other things, was arrested in Berlin at the beginning of August and has been in custody ever since.
The police had given his age as 54 at the time. According to the federal prosecutor’s office, he was a member of the “Free Palestine Movement” (FPM) militia at the time of the crime and before that of the “People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command”.
Both militias have been tasked with controlling the neighborhood by the Syrian regime. The area was completely cordoned off between July 2013 and April 2015, and residents lacked food, water and medical care.
