Ex-German soldiers jailed over attempts to send mercenaries to Yemen

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Two former German soldiers were sentenced to prison on Monday for trying to form a group of mercenaries to send to Yemen and fight alongside to "pacify" the war.

"The two men, aged 61 and 53, were sentenced to 18 months and 14 months in prison, respectively," the Stuttgart court said.

Though the court did not mention the criminals in its statement, it had previously identified the detainees as Arend-Adolphe Grass and Achim Allweyer.

The two had their sentences reduced because they had already served 10 months in detention awaiting trial, with the court saying that their admission of guilt and absence of a criminal record went in their favor.

The two former paratroopers in the German armed forces were detained in October 2021 when they were occupied with establishing a paramilitary group composed mainly of former police officers or soldiers, the federal prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe, competent for terrorism cases, said at the time.

The court said the pair had "allowed themselves to be influenced by ideas tainted by Christian fundamentalism as well as by the predictions of a Turkish astrologer."

Allweyer and Grass attempted to create their terrorist organization after receiving "messages from a psychic which they understood as binding instructions to act", prosecutors have said.

The two claimed that they wanted to "pacify the civil war zone" and force peace talks between warring parties.

The accused were intending to offer the mercenaries €40,000 per month, with Allweyer having tried, in vain, to establish a channel of communication with Saudi government officials in the hope of funding the project, according to the prosecution.

Eventually, they wanted to offer the services of their "private military company" in other conflicts.

They had contacted seven possible contractors at the time that the two former employees of the private military company Asgaard were caught.

German media revealed in 2020 that Asgaard was the hub of a vast far-right network, which inflicted quite the damage on the private military company.