A German-Syrian dual national believed to have known the September 11 hijackers received a 12-year prison sentence Sunday from a Syrian court, a Syrian human rights group said. The Higher State Security Court on Sunday sentenced Mohammed Haydar Zammar to life in prison for membership in the banned Muslim Brotherhood organization. But the court immediately commuted the sentence to 12 years, the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria said in a written statement. Syrian officials almost never comment on court cases or arrests of dissidents, and it is human rights groups that usually bring such incidents to public attention. Calls to a German embassy official in Damascus for comment on the sentence were not answered.