A Russian court has sentenced a man to eight years in prison after ruling he was a member of a group in Syria that was once linked to Al-Qaeda.
The military court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don on September 7 found Magomed Magomedov guilty of taking part in the activities of the Al-Nusra Front in September-November 2015.
Listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and Russia, the Al-Nusra Front is one of several groups that has been fighting against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
U.S. and Russian forces have been hitting the group with air strikes repeatedly over the past years.
The group recently renamed itself the Front of Fatah al-Sham and announced in July it had ended its relationship with Al-Qaeda.
Russian authorities have said that hundreds of Russian citizens have joined Islamic State militants fighting in Syria and Iraq in recent years.
That's raised fears that battle-hardened militants could seek to return to Russia to conduct terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus or elsewhere.
