Updated

A Berlin court says it has convicted a 37-year-old German-Syrian dual national of spying on exiled dissidents in Germany for Syria's intelligence services and given him a nine-month suspended sentence.

The Berlin state court said Wednesday that Samer C., whose last name was not given in accordance with German privacy laws, provided Syrian intelligence with photographs of dissidents and other information. The court says he also stole two mobile telephones from a dissident at a 2011 rally and passed along the data on them.

He was alleged to have worked for Syrian intelligence from March 2011 to February 2012, through contacts in the military attache's office at the Syrian Embassy in Berlin.

The verdict can be appealed.