A high-ranking member of the Islamic State militant group in Syria has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Germany, partly for alleged involvement in the genocide against the Yazidi community, prosecutors said.
The suspect, a Syrian national identified as Ossama A. in line with German privacy law, joined Islamic State (IS) in the summer of 2014 in the Deir ez-Zor region of eastern Syria, the German prosecutor-general's office said in a statement.
It said he is suspected of having led a local unit that forcibly seized 13 properties, mainly privately owned, which were used to house fighters, as office space or for storage.