A 16-year-old Syrian refugee has been sentenced by a German court to two years in prison after being found guilty of plotting a bomb attack on behalf of ISIS.
The regional court in the western city of Cologne ruled on Monday that the teenager had committed “a serious act of violence threatening state security.”
Messages found on the boy’s mobile phone showed he had been in touch with an ISIS contact in Israel who provided “concrete instructions” on how to build an explosive device.
Investigators said the teenager had also expressed willingness to carry out an attack.
The defendant, who was not identified due to Germany privacy laws, was brought to the attention of the police in September after residents and staff at the asylum shelter where he was residing became worried he had been radicalized.
He was taken to court in February.
Prosecutors said that the teen’s isolation had made him lonely and vulnerable to radical Islamist propaganda online. While in the shelter, he spent most of his time distracting himself on his mobile phone, the court said.
Judges said the plot was thwarted at a “very early stage”and that no concrete implementation of the attack had yet taken place.
The defendant’s lawyers have asked for an acquittal.
The boy and his family were among approximately 500,000 Syrian refugees who flocked to Germany in 2015 while fleeing the country’s war.
A report published this month by the Bertelsmann Foundation think tank found that, nearly a year after Angela Merkel opened the door to asylum seeks, most Germans believe their country cannot take in more refugees.
