Two Iraqi men who arrived in Finland as part of Europe's huge migrant influx were charged Tuesday with war crimes allegedly committed in their home country, officials said.
"Both cases are acts that have been defined as war crimes by the International Criminal Court...and are related to violating the corpses of dead enemy soldiers," district prosecutor Juha-Mikko Hamalainen wrote in a statement.
The alleged crimes took place in Iraq between 2014 and 2015, according to the prosecutor, who did not specify where. The names of the suspects were not released, but both arrived in Finland late last year.
The prosecutor told the Finnish news agency STT that the men claimed to have fought against the Islamic State group. Both men have pleaded not guilty and their cases are to be heard separately on March 18 and 22.
Finland, a country of 5.4 million people, received some 32,000 mostly Iraqi asylum seekers last year, as Europe experienced it biggest migrant crisis since World War II.
More than one million migrants fleeing war in Syria and upheaval across the Middle East, Asia and Africa landed in Europe since the start of 2015.