Germany's public prosecutor has arrested four suspected members of a Syrian militia and one suspected member of the Syrian secret service, it said on Wednesday.
The detained are suspected of killing and attempting to kill civilians in what amounts to crimes against humanity and war crimes. Four of them are also accused of torture.
The four alleged militia members are said to have joined the "Free Palestine Movement" (FPM) group in Syria in 2011 at the latest, which controlled a neighbourhood in the capital Damascus on behalf of the Syrian regime, according to the statement from the federal prosecutor's office.
The Yarmouk neighbourhood emerged from a Palestinian refugee camp and was completely sealed off from July 2013.
Those detained are alleged to have taken part in the violent suppression of a peaceful demonstration against the Syrian government in 2012, among other things. At least six people were killed.
They are also said to have physically abused civilians at checkpoints. "The victims were hit in the head with fists and rifle butts or kicked," Germany's top prosecutor continued.
The arrests on Wednesday were made in Berlin, Frankenthal in the south German region of Palatinate and in the north, near Boizenburg in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The state criminal investigation offices of Berlin, Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia were also supported by the Federal Criminal Police Office and Europol.
In the western city of Essen, the premises of another suspect, who is at large, were also searched.
At the same time, three more people were detained in Sweden. They are suspected of crimes in violation of international law that were committed in Syria in 2012, the Swedish public prosecutor's office announced.
