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CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Monday sentenced Alaa Abdel Fattah, a leading dissident in the 2011 uprising that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak, to five years in prison over an illegal protest.

The remaining 24 defendants in the case received sentences ranging from three to 15 years.

The defendants in the caged dock mockingly applauded when the judge pronounced the verdict, as relatives and supporters in the courtroom chanted: "Down with military rule".

Once described by the authorities as an "icon of the revolution" of 2011, Abdel Fattah had initially been sentenced to 15 years in jail but a court ordered a retrial.

The 32-year-old was among dissidents arrested after a November 2013 protest outside parliament in defiance of a law that banned all demonstrations except those authorised by police.

Three defendants were sentenced to 15 years because they were not present in the court. Another received five years and the rest three. All were fined 100,000 pounds (about $13,000).

The dissidents had been accused of assaulting police, but it was unclear if the charge was included in Monday's ruling.

"It's the last act in the circus," Abdel Fattah's sister Mona Seif wrote on Twitter. Another sister, Sanaa, was also jailed for protesting in a separate trial.

The case was among the most prominent in a series of trials of secular dissidents who have been jailed along with thousands of Islamists since the army overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

The former army chief and now President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi had said on Sunday that he would soon free "youths" wrongfully detained in the crackdown.

"These are the innocent youths Sisi spoke about in his address yesterday," Khaled Dawud, a leader of the Liberal Constitution Party, said after Monday's verdict. Two of the defendants are party members.

"It is a shame for a country that witnessed two revolutions to imprison youths for protesting," he said.

ABOARD THE CHARLES DE GAULLE — A French aircraft carrier launched operations in the Gulf on Monday as Paris stepped up its participation in the US-led military campaign against the Daesh terror group.

Seven weeks after extremist attacks killed 17 people in Paris, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian vowed France would face the jihadist threat head-on.

"This threat, jihadist terrorism, wants to reach our citizens, our interests, our values. France's response will be total firmness," Le Drian said as he launched operations aboard the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier.

Four Rafale fighter jets took off in the morning from the carrier as it sailed about 200 kilometres  off the coast north of Bahrain in the direction of Iraq.

France launched Operation Chammal in support of the US-led coalition against Daesh in September.

The Charles de Gaulle left its base in Toulon on January 13 for a five-month mission that will include eight weeks in the Gulf working alongside the USS Carl Vinson as part of the coalition launched after Daesh seized swathes of Syria and Iraq last year.

The French carrier is then to travel to India, where it is due to take part in exercises in mid-April.

Carrying 12 Rafale and nine Super Etendard fighters, the carrier will significantly increase French air capabilities in the region.

France has nine Rafales in the United Arab Emirates and six Mirage fighters in Jordan operating in Iraq, along with a maritime patrol and a refuelling aircraft.

The warship's deployment will cut in half the time it takes for planes to reach Iraq for strikes against Daesh from the base in the UAE.

France a key 

coalition member 

French warplanes have carried out about 100 reconnaissance missions and the same number of strike raids in Iraq since mid-September, defence ministry sources said.

France is, along with Australia, one of the main contributors to the 32-member coalition effort aside from the United States, which is carrying out the bulk of strikes.

The coalition has carried out more than 2,000 strikes since August, with France and other Western nations conducting operations over Iraq and several Arab nations taking part in strikes over Syria.

The campaign aims to support forces in Iraq and Syria, including rebel fighters and Kurdish forces, fighting Daesh on the ground and to hit infrastructure seized by the jihadist group such as oil facilities.

"Air support... for our Iraqi and Kurdish allies has helped curb the territorial expansion of [Daesh] and stabilise the front lines. This was our first objective and it has been attained," Le Drian said.

While excluding the deployment of ground combat troops, coalition countries have also sent trainers to work with Iraqi forces.

US military officials have said they want Iraqi forces to launch an offensive to retake the strategic northern city of Mosul from Daesh in April or May.

The Charles de Gaulle strike group also includes an attack submarine, a French anti-aircraft frigate and the HMS Kent, a British anti-submarine frigate. In total some 2,700 sailors are involved in the mission, including 2,000 on the carrier itself.

It arrived in the Gulf on February 15 after a month of operations in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

ANKARA — Turkey's military incursion into Syria to relocate a tomb surrounded by Daesh militants and evacuate the soldiers guarding it was a temporary move to safeguard their lives and not a retreat, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.

The action, which involved tanks, drones and reconnaissance planes as well as several hundred ground troops, was the first of its kind by the Turkish army into Syria since the start of the civil war there nearly four years ago.

"The Suleyman Shah tomb operation is not a retreat, it is a temporary move in order not to risk soldiers' lives," Erdogan said in a speech in the capital Ankara.

"The game of those who tried to use the tomb and our soldiers to blackmail Turkey has been disrupted," he said.

The Syrian government described the operation as an act of "flagrant aggression", a response dismissed by Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, who said the Syrian authorities had lost all legitimacy.

The 38 soldiers who had been guarding the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, were brought safely home in Saturday's night's operation.

Normally, the detachment is rotated every six months but the last one was trapped for eight months by Daesh fighters.

The tomb, on a site within Syria that Ankara considers sovereign territory as agreed in a 1921 treaty, is being relocated close to the Turkish border. Suleyman Shah's remains were taken to Turkey in the meantime.

At a news conference in Ankara, Kalin also said Turkey was working intensively with the British authorities to trace three London schoolgirls who travelled to Turkey last week and are believed to be making their way to Syria.

Thousands of foreigners from more than 80 nations including Britain, other parts of Europe, China and the United States have already joined the ranks of Daesh and other radical groups in Syria and Iraq, many crossing through Turkey.

Turkey has said it needs more information from Western intelligence agencies to intercept them. Kalin said Turkey had already deported a total of 1,400 people suspected of seeking to join extremist groups.

MURSITPINAR, Turkey — Thousands of people who fled the Syrian town of Kobani during a four-month battle between Kurdish and Daesh forces are now making their way home, only to find wrecked houses and unexploded bombs littering the streets.

The border town, once home to 200,000 people, was largely destroyed by fighting in which Kurdish defenders held off militant Islamists trying to overrun the area.

Assisted by Iraqi peshmerga forces and almost daily air strikes by the US-led coalition, the Kurds finally drove out the radical Sunni insurgents in late January and a fragile peace was restored.

Almost the entire population of Kobani fled across the border to Turkey to escape the fighting, some to refugee camps, others staying with family and friends or heading to Turkey's cities.

The returning residents' problems are far from over.

Near the Mursitpinar border crossing, dozens of people were carrying suitcases and bags of food and awaiting security checks before going back to Kobani.

One man said he was taking tents to live in as his home had probably been destroyed.

"We have fled to Turkey after ISIS [Daesh] reached to the outskirts of our town. But we have been hoping to get back home. Now that it is liberated, we are on our way back," said Muhammed Salih, 65, waiting to cross the border to Syria with his family of six.

However, Kobani official Idris Nasan said 15 people had been killed and many more injured in accidents involving unexploded ordnance since the siege was lifted.

"It's not safe for them. But they were looking forward to coming back," he told Reuters by telephone.

Turkey's largest refugee camp, built for escapees from Kobani, holds less than one third of its 35,000 capacity, according to Dogan Eskinat, spokesman for Turkey's disaster management agency AFAD.

"Turkey keeps track of exits as well as entries. The latest figure shows around 4,000 people have gone back to Kobani, he said.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish forces have regained control of at least 163 villages around Kobani. But their progress had been slowed by renewed clashes to the west and southwest of the town.

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait's appeals court sentenced prominent opposition leader Mussallam Al Barrak to two years in jail on Sunday on charges of insulting the Gulf state's ruler, his group said.

The charges relate to a speech he gave to tens of thousands of demonstrators in October 2012 protesting changes to the electoral law which he said would allow the ruling Al Sabah family to manipulate the outcome of elections.

Barrak was a member of parliament at the time but his nationalist Popular Action Movement (PAM) boycotted December 2012 and July 2013 polls held under the new electoral law.

"The appeals court passed a two-year sentence on Barrak," PAM said on its Twitter account.

It quoted its leader as vowing that the campaign for reform in the oil-rich emirate would go on.

"You can jail my body but not my ideas and will," he said.

The appeals court tried Barrak after quashing a five-year jail term handed down by a lower court in April 2013 on the same charges of insulting emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah.

That judgement sparked angry protests by opposition activists, several of whom were wounded when police responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

In July last year, there were further demonstrations when Barrak was detained for five days on separate charges of insulting the judiciary.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Iran is seeking to open a "third front" against Israel using Hizbollah fighters on the Syrian Golan Heights, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

Netanyahu said Tehran's attempts to entrench itself along Israel's borders was one of the biggest emerging security threats facing Israel.

"Alongside Iran's direct guidance of Hizbollah's actions in the north and Hamas' in the south, Iran is trying also to develop a third front on the Golan Heights via the thousands of Hizbollah fighters who are in southern Syria and over which Iran holds direct command," he said.

Speaking at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said his ministers were to be briefed on "the security challenges developing around us, first and foremost Iran's attempt to increase its foothold on Israel's borders even as it works to arm itself with nuclear weapons."

An Israeli air strike inside the Syrian-controlled sector of the Golan Heights on January 18 killed six members of Hizbollah, which is backed by Iran and allied with Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as a general from Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, but it has carried out several such strikes over the past two years, stressing its policy of preventing arms transfers to militant groups and potential attacks.

Netanyahu said that Tehran's ongoing "murderous terrorism" has "not prevented the international community from continuing to talk with Iran about a nuclear agreement that will allow it to build the industrial capacity to develop nuclear weapons."

World powers are trying to strike a deal with Iran that would prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb in return for an easing of punishing international economic sanctions.

Israel has repeatedly warned that Iran's nuclear programme has military objectives, a claim Tehran denies.

US Secretary of State John Kerry was set to arrive in Geneva Sunday for renewed talks with his Iranian counterpart on Tehran's nuclear programme, after warning "significant gaps" remain ahead of a key deadline.

Stockholm — A Swedish journalist has been freed from captivity in Syria after a week-long detention by Syrian government forces, local media reported Sunday.

Joakim Medin, a 30-year-old freelance reporter, told the Expressen newspaper that he was seized at a roadblock along with his Kurdish interpreter Sabri Omar while working in the Kurdish town of Qamishli on the border with Turkey.

Both were reportedly freed late Saturday night.

"I was taken by the regime," Medin told the newspaper.

Swedish Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Ulla Jacobson confirmed Medin's release but could not provide further details.

"He is free, we have been in touch with him," she told AFP.

Medin told Expressen he was not subjected to violence but was interrogated and held in solitary confinement in a tiny cold dark cell "full of dirt and blood".

"I was there to report on the situation and hadn't entered the country the official way via the Syrian government," he said, adding that Syrian soldiers questioned him about his links to the Kurds, Turkey and Israel.

Medin has worked for Swedish media in Kurdish areas of Syria since 2014, including the border town of Kobani which was over-run by militants from the Daesh group and liberated by Kurdish forces last month after more than four months of fighting.

In December, he was arrested by Turkish border guards and interrogated for illegally entering the country from Kobani.

According to Expressen, a Kurdish group — the Democratic Union Party (PYD) — negotiated for the release of the Swede and his interpreter with Syrian forces in return for Syrian soldiers captured by Kurdish fighters.

Damascus — A suicide bomber killed four people in a hospital on Saturday in an attack that took Syria's civil war to the ruling Assad clan's hometown for the first time, a monitoring group said.

The attack came as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that troops had executed 48 people earlier last week in a northern village, among them 10 children.

"The explosion that hit the town of Qardaha... was caused by a suicide bomber driving a car along with another person," said the observatory, adding that the passenger, likely an accomplice, also died in the blast.

"Two women and two soldiers were killed in the attack," said observatory director, Rami Abdel Rahman.

Earlier, state television had reported the blast but did not specify the nature of the attack.

The attack, the first explosion to hit the heart of the western town since the outbreak of Syria's civil war in 2011, took place in the parking lot of Qardaha hospital.

The outskirts of Qardaha have previously come under rocket fire, while Latakia province — where the town is located — has seen several rounds of heavy fighting.

A mausoleum containing the graves of President Bashar Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez, and brother Bassil, is located in Qardaha.

The clan has ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than 40 years.

Syria's war began in March 2011 as a pro-democracy revolt seeking Assad's ouster. It morphed into a conflict after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown on dissent.

LONDON — Britain debated Sunday how to stop teenage girls joining Daesh group in Syria after three high-achieving youngsters became the latest to run away from home.

Close school friends Kadiza Sultana, 17, and 15-year olds Shamima Begum and Amira Abase left their east London homes on Tuesday and flew to Istanbul, raising concerns they would travel on to Syria to join Daesh jihadists.

All three were spoken to in December by police investigating the disappearance of a friend who went to Syria but Scotland Yard insists there was "nothing to suggest at the time that the girls themselves were at risk".

Others question whether warning signs were missed and more should have been done to stop them travelling.

Someone using a Twitter account in Begum's name last Sunday seems to have contacted Aqsa Mahmood, a woman from Glasgow, Scotland who reportedly travelled to Syria last year to marry a Daesh group fighter.

Mahmood's family, who strongly condemn her actions, have questioned why more was not done to take action in the wake of this.

"We are aware from contacts with the Special Branch of police that her social media contact is regularly checked and regularly monitored," Aamer Anwar, lawyer for the Mahmood family, told the BBC Sunday.

"The fact that she is now engaging with other young people and trying to recruit them, they're saying 'what exactly is the security services doing in this country?'"

The debate reflects an issue of growing concern in Britain.

Counter-terrorism experts estimate that around 50 women have travelled from the UK to Syria to join Daesh group, while tales of "jihadi brides" have become a staple of Britain's tabloid press.

Some 550 women from across Europe have travelled to Iraq and Syria, where they often marry fighters and help to recruit others, according to a study from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue think tank last month.

'No single journey to terrorism' 

Opinions vary on what can be done to stop it.

Under a new law which came in this month, the passports of Britons suspected of travelling to Syria or Iraq can be seized before travel — although the girls in this case were not suspected in advance.

Prime Minister David Cameron's government also plans to introduce additional measures in the coming months including exit checks on passports and enhanced screening at airports.

Turkish Airlines, with whom the girls flew to Istanbul, said its responsibility was checking passengers' visas and pre-flight security issues were the "responsibility of official airport authorities".

Cameron said Saturday that the case highlighted that "the fight against Islamist extremist terror is not just one that we can wage by the police and border control".

Calling the situation "deeply concerning", he urged schools, universities and colleges to recognise their roles.

But Sayeeda Warsi, Britain's first female Muslim Cabinet minister who resigned last year over the government's Gaza policy, warned there was no "single journey to somebody becoming a terrorist".

She highlighted the role of the Internet in radicalising young Muslims in an interview with Sky News Sunday.

That was echoed by Ross Frenett of the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, who stressed more effort should be made to counter online propaganda.

He also advocated more help for families like those of the three girls — who Saturday issued emotional appeals for their return — in identifying the signs of radicalisation.

"An awful lot of extremism... is people looking for a sense of belonging," Frenett said.

"That's not unique to people who are maladjusted. An awful lot of extremism of all types actually comes from people with well-off backgrounds who tend to be very well adjusted".

RAMALLAH — A top Palestinian official on Sunday accused Israel of trying to topple the Palestinian Authority (PA) by continuing its freeze on millions of dollars in crucial tax monies.

Speaking to Voice of Palestine radio, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat demanded world action to pressure Israel into releasing monies owed to the PA which were frozen as a punitive measure nearly two months ago.

"Israel is aiming to collapse the Palestinian Authority with all its institutions, so the international community should do much more than stating what the results of such move might be," Erekat said.

"This money is not Israeli money nor donors' money, this is an unprecedented act of piracy," he railed.

Every month, Israel transfers to the PA around $127 million in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports — revenues which collectively make up around two-thirds of the authority's annual budget, excluding foreign aid.

But on January 2, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended the December funds as a punitive measure after the Palestinians moved to join the International Criminal Court, where they could potentially sue Israel for alleged war crimes.

The move has put huge financial pressure on the already-struggling PA, prompting concern within the international community.

"Israel has been doing its best to lead to the PA collapse for years, Netanyahu wants a PA without any authority and now he withholds the funds in order to make it collapse," Erekat said, demanding the international community do "much more" than merely issuing statements of condemnation.

Speaking in London on Saturday, US Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated Washington's concerns over the "continued viability" of the PA if it did not receive the funds "soon."

"If the Palestinian Authority ceases... security cooperation [with Israel] or even decides to disband as a result of their economic predicament, and that could happen in the near future if they don't receive additional revenues, then we would be faced with yet another crisis that could also greatly impact the security of both Palestinians and Israelis," he said.

"That would have the potential of serious ripple effects elsewhere in the region."

Under a 1994 economic agreement between the sides, Israel transfers to the PA tens of millions of dollars each month in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports.