German prosectors on Wednesday said that they were charging a Syrian man with war crimes committed as a jihadist militant for the Islamic State group.
In the wake of President Bashar al-Assad's overthrow, German authorities have vowed to keep bringing suspects to justice for crimes committed during the Syrian civil war.
Prosecutors said that the suspect, partially named as Osama A., was being charged with membership of a terrorist organisation abroad and as an accomplice to genocide, as well as other war crimes.
They said he had joined the jihadist group by mid-2014 and took on a senior position in IS's local security forces in Syria's Deir Ezzor region bordering Iraq.
He "played a central role" in IS's expropriation of several buildings, two of which were then used for the sexual exploitation of female captives from the Yazidi minority.
The Kurdish-speaking Yazidis were a particular target for IS, who considered their non-Muslim faith heretical. The jihadists massacred thousands of men and abducted thousands of women and girls as sex slaves.
German prosecutors say other properties that Osama A. helped to seize were used as living quarters for IS fighters, as offices or for storage.
He is also accused of recruiting his 13-year-old nephew to IS, who went on to fight for the group in the northern city of Aleppo.
Germany has previously used the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the prosecution of certain grave crimes regardless of where they took place, to try Syrians over atrocities committed during the civil war.
In the wake of Assad's ouster, Berlin vowed that any of the former president's "henchmen" fleeing to Germany would be brought to justice.
IS seized large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in the early years of the civil war, declaring a cross-border "caliphate" in 2014.
US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces defeated that proto-state in 2019, but the jihadists have maintained a presence in Syria's vast desert.
Last week, Syrian authorities said they had foiled an attempt by IS jihadists to blow up a revered Shiite shrine in a Damascus suburb.