A Kosovo court has sentenced an Albanian citizen to 180 hours of community labor for raising a flag of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group at a crossroads in Pristina.
Court records identified the man as Q.M. and said he was arrested in September when he and two minors raised the IS flag on a street in Kosovo’s capital.
The court said the action was the equivalent of “a public call or urging others to go to Syria and Iraq and join a terrorist organization.”
About 300 Kosovars reportedly have joined IS fighters in Syria and Iraq, most of them between 2013 and 2014.
Authorities in Pristina say more than 100 Kosovars who traveled to Iraq or Syria to join IS have returned to Kosovo.
They say about 70 are still active with the extremist group in Syria and Iraq.
