STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish prosecutors have charged a Syrian asylum-seeker and a former fighter with Damascus' government forces with war crimes on suspicion that he posed in front of dead or wounded combatants from the Islamic State group.

Prosecutor Karolina Wieslander said Thursday that 33-year-old Mohammad Abdullah had committed "a serious violation" of the victims' "personal dignity" under international law when he knowingly posed in January 2014. Abdullah says he was ordered to pose.

Wieslander said Abdullah, who arrived in Sweden a year later as an asylum-seeker, knew the photos were intended as propaganda.

A trial in Stockholm has been scheduled to start Sept. 18.