German court convicts Syrian over stabbing that triggered Chemnitz riots

A German court sentenced a Syrian asylum seeker to nine and a half years in prison on Thursday over the fatal stabbing of a man in the eastern city of Chemnitz last year that triggered the worst far-right riots Germany had seen for decades.The verdict handed down in the city of Dresden in the high profile case comes barely a week before elections in the region in which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to make big gains.The AfD welcomed the verdict.