A member of the far-left terrorist group DHKP-C, mostly active in Türkiye, was sentenced to three years in a German jail on Thursday.
The 44-year-old, whose name was not given in line with privacy laws, was found guilty of "membership of a foreign terrorist group" and acting as the group's local leader in the city of Mannheim.
The Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart has concluded that the accused carried out several roles within the terror group, such as recruiting young people, organizing propaganda events and collecting money for DHKP-C members.
Germany banned the DHKP-C in 2000, but the group is still active in the country, with around 600 followers among the immigrant population, according to the domestic intelligence agency BfV.
Besides Türkiye, the U.S. and European Union list the DHKP-C as a terrorist organization. The group claimed responsibility for various terror attacks, including one in 2013 that targeted the U.S. Embassy in Ankara and the killing of a prosecutor in an Istanbul courthouse in 2015.
In February, two members of the terrorist group were killed when they opened fire on police officers outside a courthouse complex in Istanbul as they tried to storm the place.
The terrorist group pursues a far-left ideology and has been actively carrying out attacks and assassinations in the country since the 1980s, but its campaign of violence hit a snag when faced with Türkiye’s barrage of counterterrorism operations.
Ankara has repeatedly urged its NATO ally Germany to stop tolerating terrorist groups, which use the country as a platform for their activities against Türkiye, most notably the PKK.
