A Tajik man living in the Netherlands has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for recruiting members for the terrorist group Islamic State (IS), by judges in Rotterdam.

The court said the 31-year-old was a member of IS’s Afghan branch and aimed to raise as much money as possible for the group while also trying to recruit others. He also told undercover officers that he intended to join the jihad himself.

“The suspect said he would need a year or two before he would go to fight, and that he would be too old after that,” the ruling said.

The man travelled from Tajikistan to Russia in 2012 for work. In 2017, he was arrested in Turkey on suspicion of trying to travel to Syria to join IS and was deported.

He later surfaced in Ukraine, where he joined an IS cell. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he arrived in the Netherlands and was granted a residence permit in May that year.

The court said he maintained contact with other IS members and, while no concrete attack plans were found, he was “positioning himself in such a way that he would at some point carry out an attack”.

He was arrested following an investigation triggered by a report from the AIVD intelligence service.

He came into contact with undercover officers in 2023, who reported that he was trying to earn money for IS while living in the Netherlands.

The man’s wife was arrested at the same time but was acquitted earlier this year.