Region

BEIRUT — Twenty-eight people have been charged with planning to carry out suicide bomb attacks and belonging to the militant group Islamic State, Lebanon’s state news agency said on Monday.

The move follows three bombings in Lebanon late last month and a security crackdown in the capital Beirut and other parts of the country.

Lebanon has suffered a wave of sectarian violence linked to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, which are fighting insurgencies and have lost control of large tracts of land to Islamic State, a powerful jihadi militant group straddling the border.

Seven of the 28 charged by prosecutors on Monday are in custody, the agency said. The prosecutor at the military court charged the group with buying equipment to carry out attacks in residential areas of Beirut and for supplying it to potential bombers.

The case has now been referred to a military magistrate, the agency added. It did not give the names or nationalities of those charged.

Lebanese authorities have carried out a series of security raids on hotels in the capital and other parts of the country in recent weeks after the latest series of attacks.

The head of Lebanon’s General Security service narrowly escaped a suicide bombing near the Syrian border on June 20. Three days later, an attacker blew up his car near an army checkpoint in Beirut, killing himself and a security officer.

A Saudi suicide bomber wounded three security officers in a hotel close to the Saudi Arabian embassy in the capital two days later. Shortly before that bombing, security forces detained 17 people at a Beirut hotel on suspicion of planning attacks.

France’s foreign ministry confirmed on June 24 that one of the men detained in the hotel raid had French nationality. Lebanese security sources said a French man of Comorian origin was the only one of the original 17 who was still in detention a day later and that the others were released.

BEIRUT — Syrian troops advanced in and around the northern city of Aleppo on Monday, in what appears to be an attempt to lay siege to opposition-held parts of the country’s largest city, activists said.

The troops faced rebels stretched thin by a two-front fight against government forces and Islamic militants encroaching on opposition-held areas. If rebels are driven out of Aleppo, it would be a near-fatal blow to an uprising that began in March 2011 as largely peaceful protests against President Bashar Assad’s rule, but later turned into a full-fledged civil war.

Aleppo is the last large urban area that Syrian rebels hold after losing territory to government forces over the past year, and it lies close to the border with Turkey, an important friendly supply route for rebels. Raqqa, further east, is held exclusively by Sunni extremists from the Islamic State group.

“If Aleppo falls, the Syrian revolution falls,” said an Aleppo-based activist who uses the name Baraa Halabi, speaking to The Associated Press over Skype.

Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial centre, has been carved up into rebel- and government-controlled areas since an opposition offensive in mid-2012.

Rami Abdulrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Monday that reinforcements, including members of the elite Republican Guards and allies from Lebanon’s Hizbollah group, recently arrived in Aleppo.

They appeared to be reinforcing Syrian government forces, which have been steadily seizing control of the city’s entrances.

Last week, troops seized the Sheikh Najjar neighbourhood and a key industrial area, allowing them to choke off eastern entrances to rebel-held parts of Aleppo. They also captured the villages of Kafr al-Saghir and Moqbila, just north of Aleppo, tightening their grip on the city’s entrances, said Abu Hassan Marea, an activist based near the city.

They already control much of western Aleppo and have closed down most of the city’s southern entrances.

A Syrian army officer told state TV that troops now control a main highway north of Aleppo and said they had “closed a belt of up to 80 per cent from the north”. The officer did not provide his name, in line with Syrian military regulations.

Activist Abdulrahman said he did not think Aleppo would fall quickly.

“It is going to be a very difficult battle,” said Abdurrahman, whose group has a network of activists around Syria. He said the government’s aim was likely to capture Aleppo’s northern district of Handarat to further close in on rebels.

The government push came just as Islamic militants began pushing into the northern countryside surrounding Aleppo last week.

Islamic State group insurgents turned towards Aleppo’s countryside after seizing western and northern swathes of neighbouring Iraq last month. They already have strongholds along the eastern Syrian length of the Euphrates River and in the northern towns of Manbej and Al Bab. The insurgents declared a self-styled caliphate in an area straddling the two territories earlier this week.

This week, Islamic State group fighters seized Kurdish villages on the Turkish border near the provincial town of Ayn Arab near the Turkish border. They are fighting for the towns of Akhtarin and Marea.

“You look to the right, and there’s the regime. You look to the left, it’s the Islamic State [group]. We are caught in a pincer,” said activist Halabi.

Rebels were rushing to bring in convoys of fighters, according to Halabi and another activist, who uses the name Abdullah Ghannam.

“Rebels in the area aren’t enough to fill all the fronts — we have four or five active fronts now,” Ghannam said.

Fears over the Aleppo front began about a month ago, said the activists, when forces loyal to the government began hammering away at the industrial area. The attacks came after rebel-held areas were badly weakened by bombardment with crude barrel bombs for months.

Government forces were emboldened from a year of victories, most recently wresting back the central city of Homs from rebels. They had cut rebel supply lines into neighbouring Lebanon, and their crushing blockades of rebel-held areas caused insurgents to surrender.

Rebels have also been badly weakened after infighting against Islamic State group extremists began in December last year, the clashes killing thousands of people and diverting the fight.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Three Jewish extremists arrested for the killing of a Palestinian teenager have confessed to the attack, an Israeli official said Monday, as shock waves from the brutal murder continued to spread.

As police struggled to contain five days of violent clashes in occupied East Jerusalem and in Arab towns across Israel, tensions were further raised by a series of Israeli air strikes on Gaza, which killed several Palestinian fighters.

It was the worst bloodshed since the start of the current round of violence in and around Gaza, raising fears of a fresh confrontation between Israel and Palestinian fighters in the coastal enclave.

The latest violence in Gaza began after June 12 as Israel pressed a vast West Bank arrest campaign to find those behind the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers, whose bodies were found on June 30.

Two days later, a 16-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem was kidnapped and killed in a suspected revenge attack, with police arresting six Jewish extremists, three of them minors.

During their investigation, three of the suspects admitted to the murder in which the victim was burned alive, an official close to the investigation told AFP.

“Three out of six suspects in custody have confessed to the murder and burning of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and performed a re-enactment of the crime,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The murder has sparked shock and outrage, and no small measure of shame in Israel.

“To take a young boy, to kill him, to burn him — what for?” asked outgoing President Shimon Peres.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Peres called the teenager’s father to convey condolences and express outrage over the murder.

“I am ashamed on behalf of my nation and grieve with you,” Peres said, according to a statement, with Netanyahu condemning the murder as “abhorrent”.

8 Gaza fighters dead 

Meanwhile, medics retrieved a body from a tunnel near the southern city of Rafah, saying it brought the death toll from overnight Israeli air strikes to eight.

But although Israel’s army announced carrying out a number of strikes, it denied responsibility for the collapsed tunnel, saying fighters had blown themselves up with their own explosives.

Two of the fighters were from the Popular Resistance Committees, while the other six from the armed wing of Hamas, which Israel blames for the murder of the three teenagers.

The army confirmed hitting 14 targets overnight, and said fighters had fired an anti-tank missile at an army patrol by the border fence, causing no injuries.

Rocket fire continued into Monday evening, with some 50 projectiles hitting southern Israel since midnight, and warplanes carried out more strikes on Gaza, causing no casualties.

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said the military mobilised several hundred reserve troops near the border with Gaza in case of a “deterioration” after the fighters’ deaths.

The army has stressed its reinforcements are purely a defensive move, but Lerner said that two combat brigades were on stand-by if needed.

Lieberman bolts 

So far, Israel’s response to the rocket fire has been relatively measured, with Netanyahu resisting calls from Cabinet hardliners for a major operation in Gaza.

The premier was convening a Security Cabinet meeting Monday evening.

Meanwhile Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the rightwing nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, said he was ending his party’s 20-month alliance with Netanyahu’s Likud over its handling of the Gaza crisis.

Lieberman’s faction is to remain in the governing coalition but his party’s divorce from the Likud was expected to give it greater freedom of action in parliament.

Overnight, the angry protests which have gripped East Jerusalem and Arab Israeli towns continued to spread, with police arresting 110 people for throwing stones, damaging property and interfering with police work.

Much of the violence began in the Triangle, a concentration of Arab towns and villages close to the border with the northern West Bank, but has since spread to the Galilee region as well as to the southern Negev desert.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s new parliament postponed its next session for five weeks on Monday, extending the country’s political paralysis in the face of a Sunni Islamist insurgency which claimed the life of an army general on the northwestern outskirts of Baghdad.

Citing the inability of political camps to reach “understanding and agreement” on nominations for the top three posts in government, the office of acting speaker Mehdi Al Hafidh said parliament would not meet again until August 12.

Putting off the work of reaching consensus for five weeks is a slap in the face to efforts by Iraq’s Shiite clergy — along with the United States, the United Nations and Iran — to foster an inclusive government to hold the country together.

With no signs that Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki will abandon his bid for a third term, there is a risk that Iraq will fragment along ethnic and sectarian lines.

“Things are moving faster than the politicians can make decisions,” a senior Shiite member of parliament told Reuters.

The Islamic State, an Al Qaeda offshoot, and a patchwork of Sunni insurgents are holding territory they seized in northern and western Iraq last month.

Kurds, who run their own autonomous region in northern Iraq, have taken advantage of the chaos to expand their territory.

Maliki’s opponents blame his divisive rule for fuelling the political crisis and want him to step aside. They accuse him of ruling for the Shiite majority at the expense of the Sunni and Kurdish minorities.

Maliki said last week that he hoped to overcome the challenges blocking the formation of a new government after the new parliament’s first session ended without agreement on the top posts of prime minister, president and parliament speaker.

Attempts by Iraqi government forces to push militants out of cities that they seized have not yet resulted in visible gains on the ground. The government has yet to take back the rebel-held city of Tikrit since it began an offensive on June 28.

A senior Iraqi general was killed in fighting with insurgents close to Baghdad on Monday, as the army fights to hold militants back from the capital.

Major General Negm Abdullah Ali, commander of the army’s sixth division, responsible for defending part of Baghdad, was killed just 16km northwest of the capital.

Top US defence officials, who have deployed advisers to the region to assess the state of the Iraqi military, said last week the security forces were able to defend the capital but would have difficulty going on the offensive to recapture lost territory, mainly because of logistic weaknesses.

Shared rule

Under a governing system put in place after the removal of Saddam Hussein, the prime minister has always been a member of the Shiite majority, the speaker of parliament a Sunni and the largely ceremonial president a Kurd.

Politicians criticised the parliamentary delay, but held others responsible. Sunnis and Kurds blame the State of Law coalition, the Shiite grouping that includes Maliki’s Dawa Party, for failing to name a prime minister.

Sunni lawmaker Salim Jabouri, head of the Diyala Hawiyyatuna list, told Reuters he was “astonished” and frustrated at the length of the delay.

“This issue cannot be settled by one party without agreement among the rest... and no party has made up its mind concerning their nominee.”

The State of Law said it rejected the “transgression of constitutional timelines” caused by the delay.

Maliki’s bid for a third term as prime minister appears to be hanging in the balance. Results of April’s elections initially suggested parliament would easily confirm Maliki in power for another term.

Some within his own alliance are whispering about the need for him to step aside, although Maliki has stated publicly he will not give up his candidacy.

“The Prime Minster can’t get the numbers as they stand now,” a State of Law official told Reuters. “If State of Law doesn’t think Maliki can get the numbers, then [we] will put another name forward. As every day passes...Maliki realises this more and more.”

Another State of Law member called the decision to postpone the session unconstitutional and said it would hinder efforts to reach agreements on the top posts.

“The postponement for a month will lead to a state of slackness and lack of seriousness in conducting dialogue,” Abbas Bayati said on state television.

Joining the chorus, Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Al Sadr on Sunday urged the State of Law coalition to withdraw its support for Maliki and choose another candidate.

Iraqi lawyer Zaid Al Ali called the delay “another failure of the political class”.

“Each side is prioritising their own situation above all other interests.”

KUWAIT — A prominent Kuwaiti opposition politician whose detention last week set off a wave of sometimes violent protests in the oil-rich Gulf Arab state was freed on bail on Monday, his lawyer said.

Musallam Al Barrak, who had been detained for questioning after allegedly insulting Kuwait’s judiciary, has long been at loggerheads with the authorities over changes made in 2012 to an election law which he and other opposition politicians said were intended to prevent them taking power.

One of Barrak’s lawyers, Mohammed Abdel-Kader Al Jassim, said a Kuwaiti court on Monday had ordered the former lawmaker be freed on payment of a 5,000-dinar ($17,700) bail and delayed his case until September.

Police used smoke bombs late on Sunday to disperse hundreds of Barrak’s supporters as they tried to march from the Grand Mosque to the main court complex in Kuwait City to demand his release. The police said the demonstrators had failed to obtain a licence for their march.

DUBAI — The president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahayan, is in good health, his brother, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, said on Monday, after speculation on social media about his condition.

OPEC member UAE, a key Western ally, is a major oil exporter and a regional financial, trade and tourism hub.

There has been speculation on social media in recent days about the health of the 66-year-old president, who underwent surgery after a stroke in January.

The WAM state news agency quoted Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahayan, as saying his brother was “well and his health was good”.

“[Sheikh Mohammed] urged all to be careful and to seek accuracy when conveying information so that the use of modern technology and social media contributes to everything that is for the good of our society,” WAM quoted Sheikh Mohammed as telling Emiratis.

Sheikh Khalifa has not been seen in public for months but state media regularly carry news of him conducting official business, such as issuing new laws or approving foreign aid donations.

Born in 1948, Sheikh Khalifa is known as a pro-Western moderniser who has ruled the UAE since the death of his father Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahayan in 2004.

He is also the ruler of oil-producing Abu Dhabi, the richest and most powerful of the UAE emirates, which also include Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Umm Al Quwain and Ras Al Khaima.

Abu Dhabi, operates a sovereign wealth fund that is one of the world’s biggest investors.

Sheikh Mohammed, 52, has for much of the past decade led negotiations on behalf of the UAE government in sectors ranging from energy and defence to investment, domestic politics and international affairs.

The UAE is an ally of the United States and has used its formidable foreign currency reserves to back the military rulers of Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood opposition.

It is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council along with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, and has a very large expatriate population. The UAE exported around 2.6 million barrels a day of oil in 2013, official figures show.

MANAMA — Bahrain on Monday declared a senior US official persona non grata and asked him to leave the kingdom immediately, state news agency BNA said, because he had “intervened flagrantly” in the country’s internal affairs.

BNA said that the foreign ministry had declared US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, Tomasz Malinowski, persona non grata after he “held meetings with a particular party to the detriment of other interlocutors, thus discriminating between one people, contravening diplomatic norms and flouting normal interstate relations”.

The latest move highlights the sensitivity in relations between the strategic allies. Bahrain is a US ally in a volatile region and has long provided a base for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. But at the same it faces criticism over its record on human rights.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she had heard the reports but said a team of diplomats, including Malinowski, remained in Bahrain and were working with the government.

“He’s in Bahrain. He remains in Bahrain. He’s in Bahrain today,” Psaki said at a news briefing in Washington.

“This visit is not complete yet. He’s still on the ground and we’re in close touch with government officials.”

Last year, Bahraini lawmakers urged the government to stop the US ambassador in Bahrain from interfering in domestic affairs and meeting government opponents.

Bahrain, which is ruled by the Sunni Al Khalifa family, still faces frequent low-level unrest more than three years after authorities quelled Shiite Muslim-led protests against the Sunni-led government.

A Bahraini policeman died on Saturday of wounds sustained in a bombing that the Interior Ministry said was a terrorist act.

Bahraini Shiites, who make up the majority of the population, complain of political and economic marginalisation, an accusation the government denies.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM  — The involvement of Jewish extremists in the brutal murder of a Palestinian teenager has forced Israel to confront the growing danger of violently anti-Arab narrative peddled by the far-right fringe.

“The diabolical murder of 16-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir is the Shin Bet’s nightmare scenario,” wrote Yossi Melman in Maariv newspaper, referring to Israel’s internal security agency.

“It is a scenario in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict turns into a tribal battle between two communities according to the biblical formula of an eye for an eye, which is likely to leave in its wake destruction, ruin and scorched earth on both sides.”

Shin Bet is leading the inquiry into the murder of Abu Khdeir, whose charred body was found in woodland on Wednesday morning, shortly after he was kidnapped from occupied East Jerusalem.

Initial post mortem results showed he was still alive when they set fire to him.

Six Jewish suspects, three of them minors, were arrested early on Sunday in connection with the killing — which is believed to be a bloody act of revenge for the murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank last month.

Three of them have confessed to the murder, a source close to the investigation told AFP on Monday.

Inspired by Kahana 

Israel press reports have suggested the involvement of two groups: “La Familia”, a gang of extremist football fans who follow Beitar Jerusalem and are known for their virulently racist outbursts, and Lehava, a far-right group which campaigns against intermarriage, particularly with Arabs.

Both groups are active on social media, with La Familia boasting 13,000 “likes” on Facebook.

Other extremist groups maintain a much lower profile, such as the so-called hilltop youth, a group of hardline nationalist settlers known for seizing hilltops in the occupied West Bank in order to establish new unauthorised settlement outposts.

They are also believed to be behind a growing wave of racist, anti-Arab vandalism, euphemistically termed “price tag” attacks which initially began as a reaction to state moves against the settlements but has morphed into a much broader expression of xenophobia.

Ideologically, such groups take their inspiration from Kahanism, a racist anti-Arab ideology espoused by Rabbi Meir Kahana whose Kach Party and another offshoot were banned in 1994 after one of its members gunned down 29 Muslims in a Hebron mosque.

For months, ministers and former intelligence chiefs have been pushing the government to clamp down on Jewish extremists, and declare those responsible for “price tag” violence “terrorists”.

But their calls have fallen on deaf ears, with the government agreeing only to declare the perpetrators as being in an “illegal organisation”.

Fuelling the fire 

Following the discovery on June 30 of the bodies of the three Israeli teenagers who had been abducted and killed by militants 18 days earlier, senior ministers were quick to fire off a string of belligerent statements, prompting accusations they had poured fuel on the already smouldering fire among extremists.

“They were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by human animals,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

“Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan himself has not devised,” he said, quoting the poet Haim Nahman Bialik.

Twenty-four hours later, more than 200 Jewish extremists took to the streets of Jerusalem, screaming “Death to Arabs!”, dragging people out of cars and storming the light rail system in what one witness described as “a pogrom”.

Several hours later, Abu Khder was snatched before dawn as he went to the mosque to pray, with his burnt body found by police shortly afterwards.

Israel’s justice ministry has since launched a major crackdown on online incitement to hatred, opening a public hotline.

But there has also been an outpouring of shock and disgust by Israelis, both online as well as in the traditional media.

“And perhaps the incitement we have been seeing for the past week on the social networks, and the tens of thousands of ‘likes’ received by each call for revenge, for murdering Arabs — maybe that is our face,” wrote Sima Kadmon in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

“Perhaps something bad has happened to us as a society, and without having noticed, hatred, racism, violence and extremism have taken over our lives like a malignant disease, from the price tag actions to the calls on the streets and on the social networks to murder Arabs.”

One of the first to denounce the killing as “horrendous” was the family of one of the murdered Israeli teenagers.

Since July 2, there have also been many demonstrations against racism and revenge in occupied Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.

And in the occupied West Bank, influential settler rabbi Elyakim Levanon said Abu Khder’s killers should be put to death, along with those who murdered the three Israeli youths.

CAIRO — Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi warned world powers on Monday that Islamist militants are ravaging the Middle East and pose a threat to everyone’s security.

“Be alert to what is happening in the region... This region is being destroyed right now and we should not let this happen,” Sisi said in a televised speech.

“This matter concerns not just the Arab world. It concerns the entire world,” he said, naming the United States, Russia, China and Europe.

Militants have long challenged pro-Western Arab countries, and Egypt itself faces an Islamist insurgency based in the Sinai peninsula.

But a lightning advance by the Islamic State through major oil producer Iraq has rung alarm bells from Cairo to Washington.

The Al Qaeda offshoot declared itself a “caliphate” last month, weeks after overrunning the northern city of Mosul and seizing swathes of land north and west of the capital.

Top US defence officials said last week Iraq’s security forces were able to defend the capital, Baghdad, but would have difficulty going on the offensive to recapture lost territory, mainly because of logistic weaknesses.

Sisi did not name the Islamic State in his speech, but the mention of “countries that are being destroyed and divided in the name of religion” was a clear reference to their actions in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

Sisi told Reuters before his election in May that Egypt needed US support to combat militants, who have stepped up attacks on Egyptian security forces since the army toppled president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood just over a year ago, killings hundreds in bombings and shootings.

The government has declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group, but the Brotherhood says it is a peaceful movement.

The former army chief warned that the Sinai could turn into a base for “terrorism”, destabilising Egypt and the region.

Most of Sisi’s speech focused on efforts to revive the economy and fix state finances, which have been battered by more than three years of political turmoil.

He said his government’s decision to cut subsidies for fuel and electricity were necessary to improve Egypt’s budget deficit, which is set to hold at 10 per cent of economic output in the next three years.

Gulf Arab allies opposed to the Brotherhood have extended more than $12 billion in cash and petroleum products to help Egypt stave off economic collapse. But Sisi said reforms, not aid, were needed to ensure long-term stability.

“Our brothers stood by our side,” he said. “But for how long and then what?”

CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi’s stated regret over the trial that imprisoned Al Jazeera journalists was a strong signal to a judiciary whose harsh rulings have prompted international outrage, analysts said.

Sisi, who had previously said it would be inappropriate to remark on court rulings, conceded on Sunday that the lengthy prison sentences in June for the three reporters, including Australian Peter Greste, had had a “negative effect”.

The former army general told Egyptian newspaper editors during a roundtable that he wished the reporters had been deported after their arrest, rather than put on trial.

The three journalists were sentenced to between seven and 10 years for allegedly defaming Egypt and aiding the now blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood movement of president Mohamed Morsi whom Sisi removed from power last year when he was army chief.

Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based, has backed the Brotherhood.

Sisi’s remarks reflected growing dismay within the ruling establishment at a string of court rulings, including mass death sentences of opposition Islamists, that repeatedly shocked the international community, analysts and officials said.

“Sisi’s comments were obviously a positive sign that he understands the damage this has done to Egypt’s reputation,” one Western diplomat told AFP, referring to the Al-Jazeera trial.

Sisi’s remarks “hopefully will serve as a clear signal to the judiciary that the appeals process needs to be completed quickly and in favour of release of the journalists involved”.

His office has said that Sisi, who won a presidential election in May, cannot intervene to pardon the reporters until the appeals process is completed.

The army’s ousting of Morsi in July last year unleashed a deadly crackdown on the Islamists, with thousands also arrested and hundreds sentenced to death or prison in often swift trials.

Harsh and outlandish verdicts 

The government insists that it does not interfere with the courts and that their rulings must be respected. But privately, officials have expressed consternation at the sometimes harsh and outlandish verdicts.

In one case, a court handed initial death sentences to almost 700 Islamists over deadly rioting.

The Islamists, the court explained in its ruling, were “demons” who used mosques to promote “their holy book, the Talmud”, a key text in Judaism.

In the trial of the Al-Jazeera journalists, the prosecution presented such evidence as they could gather from the defendants’ laptops. This included a picture of Greste’s parents and footage of a horse in a stable.

Their sentencing came a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry, seen as Cairo’s best friend in Washington, paid the newly elected Sisi a visit in a show of support.

The day before Kerry arrived, another court sentenced 183 Islamists to death. The timing of both verdicts was seen as deeply embarrassing for Washington’s top diplomat.

Kerry, who in Cairo announced the resumption of aid suspended after Morsi’s overthrow, called the imprisonment of the reporters “chilling and draconian”.

“There is some degree of alarm in the Egyptian establishment at some of the rulings in recent weeks,” said Issandr El Amrani, the North Africa Project director for the International Crisis Group think tank.

The rulings “have had diplomatic consequences like the Jazeera trial or death sentences and were an embarrassment in US-Egypt relations”, he said.

Even supporters of Sisi’s ouster of the Brotherhood have voiced dismay about the court rulings.

“The independence of the judiciary we all defend does not mean it should work in an isolated island, with no connection to consequences” wrote influential television host Lamees Al Hadidi in one newspaper.