Region

Akçakale, Turkey — They acknowledge the risk of further violence, fear jihadists could seek to retake their home town and worry their possessions have been destroyed.

But the moment the fighting stopped, many refugees from the Syrian town of Tal Abyad could think of nothing other than going home.

Syrian Kurdish-led forces took full control of Tal Abyad on Tuesday after several days of intense fighting with Daesh militants, which sparked an exodus of more than 23,000 refugees into neighbouring Turkey.

But scores of women, elderly people and children carrying their possessions crossed back into Syria through the Turkish border post of Akcakale on Wednesday.

Some flashed the V-sign to journalists trying to film their return under the watchful eye of the police.

Many say they wanted to be home for the holy fasting month of Ramadan which starts this week.

"It's not so good here... It's not like home," 40-year-old farmer Mahmud said, carrying a sack on his head. 

"We want to spend our holy Ramadan in our homeland. We have been looking forward to it," he said, adding that he decided to return after speaking to his brother in Tal Abyad who said life has gone back to normal. 

"In my haste I left the water pump running and I wonder what happened to my agriculture equipment which is worth thousands of dollars," he said with a worried expression. 

Ahmed Al Badran, who said he just turned 90, complained he was bitter about having his birthday far from his home, which he left with his sons and grandchildren four days ago.

"Maybe it would have been better for me to stay in my village, despite what was happening there. 

"But my children didn't let me stay behind," said Badran, who has been ill since his arrival in Akcakale. 

"I was afraid of dying far from my land, but thank goodness I'm returning now," he said as his children carried him on a cart. 

"As soon as I learnt that I could return home, I felt better. No words can describe how it feels."

'Maybe lost everything' 

Tal Abyad is just over the border from Akcakale but the flat topography means only a small amount of the town is visible from the Turkish side.

Sometimes Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters can be seen patrolling along a fence where their flags are flying.

Trucks from Turkish emergency agency AFAD and and other aid groups, meanwhile, deliver food on the Turkish side to the refugees crossing into Syria. 

A long queue forms by a truck distributing milk, fruit juice, sandwiches and diapers to the refugees.

Housewife Fahriye Behedi, 40, said she was afraid of air strikes from the US-led coalition and that Daesh could come back and try and retake the town.

"I'm returning, I left my husband there. But I'm still very afraid of the bombs, how would someone not be afraid of bombs? she said. 

"When I heard the noises coming from the planes, it was very scary," said Behedi, clad in black. 

"Our lives were saved, but we may have lost everything. I don't know if my two-storey house is still standing. I'm ready to be displaced again

By early evening, around 400 people had returned to Tal Abyad, Turkish police said, a small but significant number out of 23,000 who had crossed over since the start of the fighting.

But not all the predominately ethnic Arab refugees from the town are eager to go home and some express alarm about how life will be under Kurdish rule.

Turkey has accused the YPG of carrying out ethnic cleansing to create a fully Kurdish region on its borders. But the group has slammed such claims as "unfounded slander".

Seyh Deham Haseki, 60, also a farmer, said he won't return unless the Kurds are gone, describing the Daesh as a "much lesser evil compared to the Kurdish militants".

"We won't accept the Kurds because this isn't their land. It has always been the Arab's land. We will stand against them until the very end," he said.

SANAA — At least 31 people were killed Wednesday and dozens wounded in five simultaneous bombings claimed by the Daesh terror group at Shiite mosques and offices in the Yemeni capital, medics and witnesses said.

Daesh said the attacks were in "revenge" against the Shiite Houthis, who have overrun Sanaa and much of the Sunni majority country and whom it considers to be heretics.

The blasts come almost three months after Daesh carried out multiple bombings against Shiite mosques killing 142 people. 

Two car bombs targeted mosques, while a third hit the house of the head of the Houthi rebels' politburo, Saleh Al Sammad, witnesses and security officials said.

The Daesh statement said the nearby politburo office was the target.

One of the car bombs targeted the house of Houthi leader Taha Al Mutawakel and the adjacent Al Hashush Mosque, which was targeted in the March bombings claimed by Daesh. 

The other car bomb hit the Al Quba Al Khadra Mosque in the central Hayel district, which is frequented by Houthi supporters. 

Bombs also went off at two other mosques — Al Kibssi and Al Tayssir in Al Ziraa district, with all the attacks timed to coincide with Muslim sunset prayers.

The Daesh statement claimed that the attack on Al Kibssi was a car bomb.

Witnesses said the bombs were planted near the entrances to the mosques, and exploded as worshippers flocked in for the prayers, on the eve of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. At the time of the March bombings, a Daesh statement described the attacks as "just the tip of the iceberg”.

But the carnage drew a wave of condemnations, including one from Daesh' rival Al Qaeda, whose affiliate in Yemen issued a statement saying it had nothing to do with the bombings.

The Houthis overran Sanaa in September and have since expanded their control across several regions, aided by troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

They pushed UN-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi into exile after advancing in March onto his refuge in the southern port city of Aden, triggering ongoing battles with southern fighters.

In March, Saudi Arabia assembled an Arab coalition that launched an air campaign against the rebels.

On Wednesday, the United Nations was scrambling to get peace talks in Geneva moving, with the exiled government and the Iran-backed rebels accusing each other of trying to sabotage the process.

The third day of the high stakes talks, launched by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with an appeal for a badly-needed two-week humanitarian truce, also stumbled over the makeup of the different delegations.

WASHINGTON — The United States called for a "greater commitment" from Iraq's government on Wednesday in the fight against the Daesh terror group as it lamented Baghdad's failure to deliver enough soldiers for training and underscored the need to empower Sunni tribesmen.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter told a congressional hearing that the US military had hoped to train 24,000 Iraqi security forces by this fall but had only received enough recruits to train about 9,000 so far.

"We simply haven't received enough recruits," Carter said.

"While the United States is open to supporting Iraq more than we already are, we must see a greater commitment from all parts of the Iraqi government."

President Barack Obama has faced mounting pressure to do more to blunt the momentum of the Sunni insurgents after they seized the provincial capital Ramadi last month, expanding their control over predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq.

The onslaught further exposed the shortcomings of Iraq's mainly Shiite forces and raised questions about the ability of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad to overcome the sectarian divide that has helped fuel the Daesh’s expansion.

General Martin Dempsey, the top US military officer, said he would not recommend regularly deploying small numbers of American ground forces on the front lines, simply to stiffen the spines of the Iraqis, as some of Obama's critics have suggested.

"If their spine is not stiffened by the threat of ISIL [Daesh] and their way of life, nothing we do will stiffen their spine," Dempsey said, without ruling out short-term deployments to bolster a specific campaign, say to retake a major city.

Some lawmakers at the hearing questioned whether US efforts to forge a unified, multisectarian Iraq were doomed.

“I fear that strategy won’t work,” said Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

The Republican chairman of the committee, Mac Thornberry, cited Obama’s critics, who say the strategy seems to be one of “retrenchment and accommodation” in the Middle East.

The United States sees training Sunni fighters, who would be subordinate to Baghdad, as crucial to the overall strategy. That goal in part led Obama last week to order 450 more US troops to set up a new base closer to Ramadi.

Baghdad has routinely criticised the United States for failing to deliver weapons fast enough, and Reuters previously reported that the United States only recently started fielding weapons from a $1.6 billion fund approved by Congress last year. 

PARIS — The suspected mastermind of an attack on a Paris Jewish restaurant in 1982 that left six people dead and 22 injured, has been arrested in Jordan, a source close to the case said Wednesday.

Zuhair Mohamad Hassan Khalid Al Abassi, alias "Amjad Atta", was one of three men for whom France issued an international arrest warrant earlier this year.

He was picked up on June 1 and an extradition request is underway, said a French legal source.

An official source from Jordan, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "A court [has] imposed a travel ban pending a decision on whether he will be extradited."

A source in the security services said the 62-year-old suspect was released on bail, adding: "The case is still before the courts."

Overall, between three and five men are thought to have taken part in the attack, which was blamed on the Abu Nidal Organisation, a Palestinian group.

The other two main suspects in the 1982 attack have been named as Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, alias "Hicham Harb", who lives in Ramallah in the West Bank, and Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed, alias "Souhail Othman", a resident of Norway.

The Abu Nidal Organisation is officially known as the Fateh Revolutionary Council.

"Amjad Atta" is thought to have been the number three in the group's "special operations committee".

The attack on the Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant — in the Marais district, a popular largely Jewish neighbourhood in the centre of Paris — began around midday on August 9, 1982 when a grenade was tossed into the dining room.

Two men then entered the restaurant, which had around 50 customers inside, and opened fire with "WZ-63" Polish-made machine guns.

They also shot at passers-by as they escaped down the street. The whole incident lasted only a few minutes.

The investigation has made little progress over the years. One of the few pieces of evidence was one of the guns, found in the Bois de Boulogne park on the western edge of Paris shortly after the attack.

At the time, France often suffered the spillover from the conflict in the Middle East, with numerous clashes involving Arabs and Jews on its soil. 

Two years prior to the Goldenberg attack, a bomb exploded outside a Paris synagogue, killing four and wounding around 20.

And more than 30 years later, the French capital would again be rocked when a jihadist gunmen took hostages at a Jewish supermarket and killed four — part of the Charlie Hebdo attacks that left 17 dead in total.

‘Closer to a trial’ 

Martine Bouccara, a lawyer for the son of one of the victims, Andre Hezkia, hailed the breakthrough in the case more than three decades after the killings.

“This new legal advance can only be welcome for the civil parties because it gets us finally closer to a trial,” she said.

David Pere, a lawyer for the AFVT association that represents French victims of terrorism, said it was a “major breakthrough” that means “someone will be in the dock when there’s a trial”. “But it just goes to underline the lack of action by the countries where the other two suspects reside, Norway and the Palestinian Authority,” added Pere.

According to his information, Oslo has not responded to the French request to arrest the suspect Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed.

Contacted by AFP in March, Abu Zayed’s lawyer Ole-Martin Meland said his client denied any involvement in the attack, stressing he “wasn’t there” when it occurred.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels launched a wide-ranging offensive against government positions near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Wednesday, after shelling in and around Damascus killed at least 33 people, activists said.

The rebels of the Southern Front alliance and the so-called Haramoun Army targeted several areas in the Golan, including the towns and villages of Quneitra, Khan Arnabeh, Baath, Jiba and the base of Brigade 90, the main government force in the region, said opposition activist Jamal Al Jolani, who is based in southern Syria.

"The fighting now is inside the city of Quneitra," Jolani said via Skype. He said the Haramoun Army — which includes Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate and the ultraconservative Ahrar Al Sham — shelled the area while Southern Front fighters advanced on the ground.

Insurgents have been on the offensive in southern Syria for the past three months, capturing military bases, villages and a border crossing point with Jordan.

Maj. Issam El Rayyes, a spokesman for the Southern Front, said the aim of the offensive "is to liberate remaining regime targets in Quneitra." He added that they aim to link southern Syria with rebel-held neighbourhoods in the suburbs of Assad's seat of power in the capital, Damascus.

"This is a wide battle, not a simple one," he said, adding that in addition to the towns and village in Quneitra, the rebels are fighting to control a series of strategic hills in the southern region.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting Wednesday killed a soldier and one insurgent, after six rebels were killed the day before.

Explosions from the fighting could be seen from the Israel-controlled Golan Heights several kilometres away. A Syrian government helicopter could be heard dropping bombs on rebel targets as tanks, believed to belong to the rebels, fired back. An Israeli warplane flew along the frontier as a precautionary move.

Just before noon, warning sirens sounded in the Israeli-occupied Golan, near the Quneitra border crossing. Shelling and gunfire from Syria’s civil war occasionally has strayed across the frontier, but there were no immediate reports of any spillover Wednesday. The Golan is a popular destination for tourists, some of whom stopped to watch the fighting in the distance.

Syria’s state-run SANA news agency, meanwhile, said two shells struck Arnous Park in Damascus late Tuesday, killing nine people and wounding 13 as shoppers were out ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, which begins Thursday.

Government forces earlier fired Iranian-made “elephant” rockets on the rebel-held suburb of Douma, killing 24 people, including five children and 14 women, according to the observatory.

The shelling in Damascus and Douma occurred as UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura was still in the Syrian capital. On Wednesday, he ended a three-day visit to Syria, during which he met Assad and other officials.

“The special envoy stresses that the heavy bombings by government forces last night on Douma, which caused significant civilian casualties, calls for a strong condemnation,” a UN statement issued at the end of his visit said. “No context justifies the indiscriminate targeting of civilian areas or the use of collective punishment by a government.”

The statement also condemned rebel bombing of government neighbourhoods in the northern city of Aleppo that killed and wounded dozens this week.

Insurgents on the outskirts of Damascus occasionally shell the capital, drawing massive retaliation from government forces, which have reduced several rebel-held suburbs to rubble.

RAMALLAH — The Palestinian unity government resigned on Wednesday in a deepening rift with Gaza as the blockaded territory's de facto rulers Hamas held separate, indirect talks with Israel.

An aide to President Mahmoud Abbas said Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah "handed his resignation to Abbas", but confusion reigned over when the government was likely to dissolve.

It was also unclear what the next Cabinet might look like, reflecting the chaotic period for Palestinian politics.

Discussions on forming a new government would include consultations with the various Palestinian factions, including the Islamist Hamas, aide Nimr Hammad said.

The government of technocrats was formed last year to replace rival administrations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

"The government will continue to function until we have a new one," a Palestine Liberation Organisation official said before the official resignation. 

"I think what's coming now is the formation of a government with politicians, not a government of technocrats."

Abbas' spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said the PLO's executive committee would hold a meeting Monday, attended by Hamdallah, to discuss the "forming of a national unity government", but did not elaborate.

Officials said the move had been under discussion for several months because of the Cabinet's inability to operate in Hamas-dominated Gaza.

Hamas 'not consulted' 

But Hamas rejected any unilateral dissolution of the unity government and said it had not been consulted.

“Hamas rejects any one-sided change in the government without the agreement of all parties,” spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.

“No one told us anything about any decision to change and no one consulted with us about any change in the unity government.”

Senior Hamas official Ziad Al Zaza, however, struck a more conciliatory note, calling on Abbas “to form a unity government with all national and Islamic factions to face Israeli occupation”.

Riyad Al Malki, foreign minister in the outgoing government, said “the prime minister always wanted to incorporate new ministers.

“At the end of the day it’s not going to change anyway our position when it comes to peace and our commitment towards peace with Israel, our responsibility regionally and internationally fighting terrorism,” he said in Prague.

“Rest assured that whatever change will take place is not going to hinder our commitments regionally or internationally.”

The move comes at a critical time, with Hamas sources saying it is holding separate, indirect talks with Israel on ways to firm up an informal ceasefire that last August ended a 50-day war in Gaza.

It was not clear whether Abbas’ move to dissolve the government was linked to those talks, but the PLO official said he believed that they played a role.

“If you end up having a different kind of status for Gaza, then basically the idea of a Palestinian state completely disappears,” the official said.

‘Caught off guard’ 

Another high-ranking Hamas official said he believed Abbas decided to act after receiving word of the indirect contacts.

“When Mahmoud Abbas heard of international envoys taking part in talks to solve the [Gaza] crisis, it caught him off guard, then he took that decision,” Bassem Naim told AFP.

“He felt there was a possibility that a solution be found without the [Palestinian] Authority being involved.”

The indirect Hamas-Israel talks are said to have gone through a number of Arab and European channels.

A Hamas source said senior members of the movement had met in Doha over the weekend for talks with Qatari officials.

They focused on key issues for Hamas such as ending Israel’s blockade, now entering its ninth year, and the establishment of a sea passage between Gaza and the outside world, the source said.

He did not say whether other Palestinian factions were involved in the talks, such as Abbas’ Fateh movement, which was heavily involved in Egypt-brokered talks that ended Gaza’s 2014 conflict.

The war claimed the lives of about 2,200 Palestinians, half of whom were civilians, UN figures show. On the Israeli side, 73 people were killed, 67 of them soldiers.

An Abbas spokesman had said a truce that ended the suffering in Gaza would be welcomed, but added that it “must not have as its price a move away from the Palestinian and national consensus”.

The Palestinian unity agreement signed in April 2014 sought to end seven years of bad blood between Fateh and Hamas.

CAIRO — Egypt's president issued a decree pardoning 165 people on Wednesday, mostly youths convicted of breaking protest laws and misdemeanours ahead of the holy month of Ramadan.

Many of the pardons issued by President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi were to university students, some of whom were jailed under a draconian law that heavily punishes demonstrations staged without police permits.

The move comes amid a state-orchestrated campaign to silence dissent, where courts dispense stiff sentences against both Islamists and secular-minded activists over charges mostly related to violence. Pardons during national and religious holidays are a tradition in Egypt.

Rights groups say many of the people were sentenced over the past two years to around three to four years of imprisonment, and that some were arrested at home or on the sidelines of protests in which they were not participating.

The protest measure became law after the Sisi-led military's ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, part of a sweeping crackdown against his supporters and other dissidents.

The clampdown, which left hundreds dead and thousands in prison, some without charges, has sparked a radical backlash and attacks against security forces. 

TEHRAN — An alarming rise in the number of young Iranians who are shunning marriage prompted an unprecedented step from the government on Monday — the launch of a matchmaking website.

The move has been triggered by deep unease in the Islamic republic, where sex outside marriage is forbidden, that the family unit is eroding and by fears of a potential fall in population.

At pains to point out it was not an online dating service, officials said the "Find Your Equal" website hoped to reverse a surge in numbers, currently 11 million, of young single adults.

It will use a network of matchmakers — clerics and professionals of good standing in their communities, such as doctors and teachers —to try to pair people off.

Having trialled the system, which will be free, for a year in which officials said 130 intermediaries introduced 3,000 men and women -- with 100 couples getting married — it will now launch fully.

The aim is for 100,000 marriages over the next 12 months.

"We face a family crisis in Iran," Mahmoud Golzari, a deputy minister for sport and youth, told reporters at the unveiling of hamsan.tebyan.net in Tehran.

"There are many people who are single, and when that happens it means no families and no children," he said, defending the need for the website.

"This should have happened a long time ago," he added.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wants Iran's population of 80 million to nearly double to 150 million by 2050, last year urged officials to take new steps to improve the birth rate.

The government has since reversed past policies to control population growth, with legislation to cancel subsidies for condoms and birth control pills and eliminate free vasectomies.

The matchmaking website is another step: people register online and the matchmaker tries to come up with a suitable partner from its database.

Users must state their age, height, weight and build, eye colour, education level and languages spoken, whether they smoke and list their hobbies and interests.

Social divide 

But in a hint at Iran's economic and social divide — millions of poor families live on a few hundred dollars a month and the middle class has been hit by sanctions — other questions dig deeper.

Women, who must be veiled in Iran, have to state their preferred mode of Islamic dress, be it a traditional loose head-to-toe black chador or a more modern tight-fitting coat.

Both sexes are also asked their religion —Iran is 90 per cent Shiite Muslim — and their level of faith, and whether they would like to live abroad.

If a potential match is found, family meetings and psychological testing to try to ensure the two are compatible will follow.

Economic factors, such as high youth unemployment, are blamed for rising marriage ages — the national average is 28.1 for men and 23.4 for women. In Tehran it is higher, at 30.6 and 26.7 respectively.

Many young Iranians also cite the country's strict social mores and pressure to get married as a heavy burden, but religious families blame a Western cultural invasion for eroding traditional values.

Although online dating sites are banned in Iran, around 350 operate illegally. Millions of young adults also use Facebook and social media to hook up despite such sites being prohibited.

Zohre Hosseini, project manager for the matchmaking site, acknowledged that young people faced difficulties.

"We don't claim that we are solving all the problems," she said.

"But the problem we are tackling here is that of finding a partner."

Hitting the planned number of marriages could be a tall order, said Fatemeh, a single 24-year-old middle-class engineer from Tehran who said she would be perturbed at submitting personal information online.

"I will not use this site as I do not trust cyberspace," she said. "It's a good initiative but whether it will have an impact is another matter." 

GAZA CITY — Israel and Hamas have been holding indirect contacts about ideas for cementing a long-term truce in the Gaza Strip, sources in the Islamist movement said Tuesday. 

The contacts have gone through a number of Arab and European channels in a bid to firm up an informal ceasefire agreement that took hold last August, ending a 50-day war in Gaza. 

"There has been indirect contact between Israel and Hamas, messages passed via Arab channels as well as through European and Turkish sources," one of the sources told AFP, describing it as "an indirect exchange of ideas".

The Egyptian-brokered truce came into effect on August 26, with the sides pledging to resume indirect contacts within a month to pin down a lasting ceasefire and discuss crunch issues. 

But the follow-up talks were delayed several times and never formally resumed. 

“We are ready for an agreement. Hamas wants to solve the problems in Gaza,” the source said.

But he insisted the contacts were purely informal and that there was no formal initiative or proposal on the table. 

“Hamas has received some European envoys in Gaza and Doha with messages from Israel. 

“We received several envoys but it’s not officially talks. It’s indirect ideas and communication,” he said, noting the involvement of a UN official as well as members of the European Parliament. 

Senior Hamas officials had met in Doha over the weekend for talks with the Qataris, he said, while denying remarks attributed to a senior Hamas official which suggested there was a written proposal under discussion. 

He said the discussions were about an agreement of 5 to 10 years, and focused on key issues for Hamas such as ending Israel’s blockade, which is now entering its ninth year, and the establishment of a sea passage between Gaza and the outside world. 

He did not say whether other Palestinian factions were involved in the talks, such as the Fateh Party of President Mahmoud Abbas which was heavily involved in the Egyptian-brokered talks that ended the conflict. 

The war claimed the lives of almost 2,200 Palestinians, half of whom were civilians, UN figures show. On the Israeli side, 73 people were killed, most of them soldiers. 

CAIRO — An Egyptian court sentenced deposed President Mohamed Morsi to death on Tuesday over a mass jail break during the country's 2011 uprising and issued sweeping punishments against the leadership of Egypt's oldest Islamic group.

The general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and four other Brotherhood leaders were also handed the death penalty. More than 90 others, including influential cleric Youssef Al Qaradawi, were sentenced to death in absentia.

The Brotherhood described the rulings as "null and void" and called for a popular uprising on Friday.

The sentences were part of a crackdown launched after an army takeover stripped Morsi of power in 2013 following mass protests against his rule. Since his overthrow, Egyptian authorities have waged a crackdown on Islamists in which hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested.

The Islamist Morsi became Egypt's first freely elected president after the downfall of longtime leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Judge Shaaban Al Shami, said the grand mufti, Egypt's top religious authority, had said in his opinion that the death sentence was permissible for the defendants who had been referred to him.

Wearing his blue prison suit, the bespectacled and bearded Morsi listened calmly as Shami read out the verdict in the case relating to the 2011 mass jail break, in which Morsi faced charges of killing, kidnapping and other offences.

Shami had earlier given Morsi a 25-year sentence in a case relating to conspiring with foreign groups.

Morsi appeared unfazed, smiling and waving to lawyers as other defendants chanted: "Down, down with military rule," after the verdicts, which can be appealed, were read out at the court session in the Police Academy.

The rulings mark yet another setback for leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and increase the chances of its youth taking up arms against the authorities, breaking what the group says is a long tradition of non-violence.

‘Nail in the coffin of democracy’

The court last month convicted Morsi and his fellow defendants of killing and kidnapping policemen, attacking police facilities and breaking out of jail during the 2011 uprising.

Shami said elements of Hamas, Lebanon’s Hizbollah, Sinai-based militants and Brotherhood leaders had all participated in storming the jails. He said they had committed “acts that lead to infringing on the country’s independence and the safety of its lands”.

The death sentence request had drawn criticism from Western governments, including Washington, and human rights groups.

A senior Muslim Brotherhood member condemned the trial.

“This verdict is a nail in the coffin of democracy in Egypt,” Yahya Hamid, a former minister in Morsi’s Cabinet and head of international relations for the Brotherhood, told a news conference in Istanbul.

Western diplomats say Egyptian officials have acknowledged that executing Morsi would risk turning him into a martyr. The Brotherhood, the Middle East’s oldest Islamist group, has survived decades of repression, maintaining popular support through its charities.

The death sentences “signals the Egyptian state as rejecting de-escalation in the crackdown against the Brotherhood,” said H. A. Hellyer of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Morsi, Badie and 15 others were given 25-year jail sentences — for conspiring with Palestinian group Hamas, which rules Gaza. They included senior Brotherhood figures Essam Al Erian and Saad Al Katatni.

‘Diabolical aims’

The court sentenced Muslim Brotherhood leaders Khairat Al Shater, Mohamed Al Beltagy and Ahmed Abdelaty to death in the same case. A further 13 were sentenced to death in absentia.

In reading his verdict, Shami said that the Brotherhood had a history of “grabbing power with any price” and had “legalised the bloodletting of the sons of this country and conspired and collaborated with foreign entities...to achieve their diabolical aims”.

Badie already has a death sentence against him and Morsi has a 20-year sentence in yet another case.

Morsi has said the court is not legitimate, describing legal proceedings against him as part of a coup led by former army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in 2013. Morsi’s court-appointed defence lawyer said he would appeal the verdict.

Sisi, now president, says the Brotherhood poses a grave threat to national security. The group maintains it is committed to peaceful activism.

Some Egyptians have overlooked the crackdown, which has targeted liberal and secular activists, thankful that Sisi has delivered a measure of stability after years of turmoil.

“I don’t care whether the verdict was fair or not. Morsi deserved it,” said a young man at a café in Cairo’s Abbasiya district.

But others were not as vehement.

“My whole life, I had confidence in the verdicts of the Egyptian judiciary. But what has been happening in the past verdicts makes me suspicious,” said a friend. They declined to be named.

Relations with Washington cooled after Morsi was overthrown but ties with Sisi have steadily improved. Cairo remains one of Washington’s closest allies in the region.

US President Barack Obama lifted a hold on a supply of arms to Cairo in March, authorising deliveries of US weapons valued at over $1.3 billion.

Islamist militant groups stepped up attacks against soldiers and police since Morsi’s fall, killing hundreds.