Norwegian Syria goer gets 7.5 years

oslo - The court in Oslo Monday sentenced a 34-year-old Norwegian to 7.5 years in prison for having joined Islamic State. Kristian Michelsen traveled to Syria in 2014 to fight for the terrorist group. He was arrested in 2016 on the Turkish side of the Turkish-Syrian border and extradited to Norway by the Turkish authorities.

Both the prosecutor and the defense appeal, reported Norwegian media. The prosecutor had claimed nine years. The suspect said that after arriving in Syria he had other ideas about IS and that he had escaped the group in 2016. According to the judge, this did not appear from reports that Michelsen wrote to his sister from Syria.

Michelsen was a friend who had already traveled in Syria. Since the start of the civil war in 2011, between ninety and one hundred people from Norway went to Syria. About thirty have since returned. At least twenty have been killed, but probably this number is much higher.