Sweden jails two men for "terror crimes": reports

Two men from western Sweden on Monday were handed life sentences for committing "terror crimes" in Syria, local media reported.

Video footage that prosecutors said showed the two men beheading two others in Syria two years ago was among the evidence cited in the ruling, public broadcaster Swedish Television reported.

"The purpose is to spread fear among non-believers," the district court write in its judgment.

The men, aged 30 and 32, are two of several Swedes who have joined the "jihadist" group Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar in recent years, the channel reported.

The 32-year-old was judged to have issued orders to carry out the beheadings while the 30-year-old had set the location for the crimes, Gothenburg district court said.

The pair plead innocent during the trial and are expected to appeal the verdict.

"I am as close to certainty as one can get when I say that we will appeal. There is nothing else we can do," Lars Salkola, the the lawyer representing the 32-year-old, told the news agency TT.

The judge classified the actions as terror crimes because they were undertaken with the specific intention of striking fear in others, the court wrote in its ruling as it sided with the prosecutor.

Inmates serving life sentences in Sweden can ask authorities to set a release date once they have been jailed for 10 years, according to the country's Prison and Probation Service. Endit