Feb 26, 2018

An Israeli court on Monday sentenced a Jewish convert to Islam to 38 months in prison for seeking to join the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria.

Valentin Mazlevski, 40, a Belorussian immigrant who moved to Israel in 1996, was the first Jewish-born Israeli to be charged for having IS ties, according to the Shin Bet domestic security service.

He was arrested in February 2017, a few weeks after a failed attempt to fly from Israel to Turkey, from where he allegedly planned to cross into Syria to join IS forces.

The Nazareth district court said in its ruling that Mazlevski had "one goal: to join the organisation".

He acted "out of identification with the organisation's ideology," in the process "violating the law and endange