Sweden to Charge Militant over Jordanian Pilot Burnt to Death in Syria
Prosecutors said Thursday they plan to indict a convicted Swedish militant on charges including the 2015 killing of a Jordanian pilot burned to death in a cage in Syria.
Sweden's Prosecution Authority said in a statement it planned to charge a 32-year-old Swedish citizen on May 27 with "serious war crimes and terrorist crimes in Syria".
The trial is scheduled to begin on June 4.
Prosecutors did not name their suspect in the statement, but Sweden asked France for the extradition of 32-year-old Osama Krayem, already sentenced for the 2015 attacks in Paris and the attacks in Brussels a year later, AFP reported.
The prosectors' statement said an aircraft belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force was shot down in Syria on December 24, 2014.
The pilot was captured by the ISIS group the same day near the central city of Raqqa, it added.
The pilot was locked in a cage and burned alive and images of his death were broadcast by the extremist group.
Krayem "is suspected of having executed the pilot, together with other perpetrators belonging to ISIS said prosecutors.
"The investigation has shown that the man, armed and masked, together with others forced the pilot into a metal cage," they added.
"The cage was subsequently set on fire by one of the co-perpetrators, and the pilot died as a consequence of the fire."
Krayem, who is from Malmo in southern Sweden, joined ISIS in Syria in 2014 before returning to Europe.
In June 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in France for assisting in the planning of the 2015 Paris attacks, in which 130 people died.
The following year, he was given a life sentence in Belgium for participating in the bombings on March 22, 2016, at Brussels' main airport and on the metro system, which killed 32 people.
He has been "temporarily handed over to Sweden to participate in the trial", the prosecution said.
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