A 65-year-old Moroccan citizen was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Tuesday after being convicted by a Portuguese court of recruiting young people to fight in Syria.
Abdesselam Tazi was also found guilty by the court in Lisbon of financing the recruitment using forged credit cards.
Portugal’s public prosecutor said Tazi was an intelligent man who recruited the people, mostly from Morocco, to travel to Portugal and then join ISIS in Syria.
The court found him guilty of seven crimes.
“The sentencing caught me by surprise,” Tazi’s lawyer Lopes Guerreiro said. He said he planned to appeal against the court’s decision.
Trials of this kind are unusual in Portugal and the Justice Minister has said the number of Portuguese citizens who joined ISIS or similar groups is “not significant”.
