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TUNIS — Two Tunisian policemen were convicted late Monday of raping a young woman and sentenced to seven years in prison in a case that has captured international attention for the victim.

Earlier in court the two policemen had denied the charge, instead accusing the woman of seeking to have sex with them, provoking an emotional outburst from the alleged victim.

“They denied everything,” Radhia Nasraoui, a lawyer of the young woman known by her pseudonym Meriem Ben Mohamed, told AFP.

One of the accused claimed instead that the young woman had tried to perform oral sex, Nasraoui added.

Koutheir Bouallegue, another of the victim’s lawyers, confirmed the policemen denied raping her.

“One of them admitted that he masturbated,” he said.

After the verdict Nasraoui said she was “very disappointed” and thought it was too “lenient”.

Journalists had been barred from attending the closed court session.

Three police officers faced trial over the incident, which took place in September 2012, two of them accused of rape.

The defendants say they found the young woman and her boyfriend having sex in their car in a Tunis suburb.

According to the charges, they then took the woman to a police car, where two of them took turns to rape her, while the third policeman allegedly tried to extort money from her fiance at a bank cashpoint. He was given a two-year prison sentence, a judicial source told AFP.

The public prosecutor tried unsuccessfully to bring indecency charges against the couple, sparking a storm of protest and a campaign of support for Ben Mohamed, who was 27 when the incident took place.

She emerged from the courtroom crying on Monday afternoon, saying: “When I demand justice, they insult me.”

‘Attacking victim’s character’ 

Emna Zahrouni, another lawyer representing Ben Mohamed, said a member of the defence team emphasised during the hearing that the unmarried young woman regularly had sex, saying his claim was based on the forensic report.

“Their intention is to tell the court that she was not a virgin. They are attacking her character,” knowing that sex outside marriage is taboo, Zahrouni said.

“The only slur left [to the defence] is to call her a whore,” said Radhia Nasraoui.

Speaking before Monday’s hearing, Ben Mohamed, who has already published a book in France entitled “Guilty of Being Raped”, giving her account of what happened, had said she was not optimistic about the outcome of the trial, which she described as an “ordeal”.

But she had voiced determination to see her aggressors punished, saying she would appeal if they got off lightly.

“If only this whole episode would finish. But I will not give up, whatever the verdict,” the young woman told AFP, standing beside her boyfriend.

Outside the court house, a small group of supporters waved banners and shouted slogans, including Amina Sboui, a former member of the radical women’s protest group Femen.

“I’m here to support Meriem and all women victims of rape. Anyone guilty of raping a woman should be punished,” Sboui said, urging victims to take legal action.

“Society has been hard on Meriem,” she added.

A psychologist’s report, commissioned by the court and seen by AFP, diagnosed Ben Mohamed with “depression aggravating a state of post-traumatic stress”.

It said her condition was “directly linked to what she suffered”, and that her symptoms, which included anxiety, adaptation problems and personality disorder, can last for years after a woman is raped.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Jonathan Pollard, the US-born Israeli who is serving life for spying on America, has been raised as a possible key to breaking a logjam in the crisis-hit peace talks.

Sources close to the talks said on Monday that there was a proposal which could see Pollard freed before the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins in mid-April.

US officials have not confirmed the reports.

Pollard was arrested in Washington in 1985 and condemned to life imprisonment for spying on the United States for Israel.

He was last month taken to hospital after he reportedly collapsed in his North Carolina prison cell.

His wife, Esther, told the English-language Jerusalem Post he had undergone surgery for “multiple serious complications in his digestive system”.

In exchange for Pollard’s release, Israel would honour its commitment to release 26 Arab prisoners — including some who are Israeli citizens — whose continued imprisonment is holding up talks.

Israel would also agree to free another group of Palestinian prisoners, but it would not include anyone convicted of anti-Israeli attacks.

The proposal came up on Monday as US Secretary of State John Kerry made an unscheduled stop in Israel where he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice in 12 hours and also held talks with Palestinian negotiators.

He was, according to a Palestinian source, to return on Wednesday for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a bid to resolve the prisoner standoff.

On Monday, former Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was held captive in Gaza for more than five years before being released in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap, urged Netanyahu to secure Pollard’s release as part of the peace talks.

“I am asking you to make it clear to the Americans that before anything else, Jonathan Pollard must go free,” he wrote in a letter, excerpts of which were published in an Israeli newspaper.

Successive Israeli governments have lobbied unsuccessfully for Pollard’s release and in 1998 it was reported that he was to be freed in a prisoner swap with the Palestinians.

Then CIA Director George Tenet reportedly threatened to resign if Bill Clinton, president at the time, agreed to free Pollard.

The US naval analyst, who was born into a Jewish family from Texas, passed thousands of secret documents about American spy activities in the Arab world to Israel between May 1984 and his arrest in November 1985.

 Financial problems, eccentric behaviour 

He was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995 and officially recognised by the Jewish state as an Israeli spy in 1998.

Israelis say Pollard’s punishment and the long-standing US refusal to reduce his sentence have been particularly harsh, given that he passed on the information to Israel, a strategic ally of the United States.

Netanyahu has formally asked US President Barack Obama to pardon him but Washington has consistently refused.

The case has long been a thorn in the side of relations between Israel and Washington.

Pollard’s arrest sparked a crisis in ties that only ended with Israel promising to end all espionage activities on US soil.

CIA documents declassified in 2012 spoke of his financial problems and eccentric behaviour including a claim at one point that the Irish Republican Army kidnapped his wife.

He told investigators he had been asked by Israel to obtain US information on Arab or Pakistani nuclear programmes and “Arab exotic weaponry”, a former top secret CIA document said.

The document also said Pollard, now 59, provided data on the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) headquarters in Tunisia which helped Israel plan a 1985 raid.

And he also handed over a US assessment suggesting Syria had little chance of retaking the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a conflict.

DEIR RAFAT CONVENT, Israel — The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem condemned Tuesday an assault by vandals overnight on a Roman Catholic convent, demanding that security forces catch the perpetrators.

The vandals daubed “Mary is a cow” and “America [is] Nazi Germany” on the walls of the Deir Rafat convent and slashed the tyres of five vehicles parked nearby, security spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Patriarch Fuad Twal, the Holy Land’s senior Roman Catholic prelate, said “we condemn these repeated attacks and expect the police to arrest (those responsible).

“This is not the first time there have been attacks on Christian places of worship and until now we’ve not heard of the trial of anyone involved,” he told AFP at the scene.

The attack, some 30 kilometres west of Jerusalem, also drew condemnation from an interfaith group that represents the main Jewish, Christian and Muslim bodies in the Holy Land.

“The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land expresses its shock and distress on the acts of vandalism and graffiti” at Deir Rafat, a statement said, calling on Israeli authorities “to intensify its efforts” to catch and prosecute those involved.

“The council calls upon people from all faiths to respect all holy places and sites for all three religions, and strongly discourages extremists’ behaviour that exploits or involves religion in a political or territorial dispute.”

Our Lady, Queen of Palestine convent, as it is also known, was founded before the creation of Israel in 1948 and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

The incident there bore the hallmarks of a so-called “price tag” attack — a euphemism for a politically motivated act of vandalism by hardline Jewish settlers.

Although the attacks initially targeted Palestinians and their property, the scope has expanded to include anyone seen as opposed to the settlements.

Over the past few years, churches and Christian graveyards, anti-settlement activists and even, on occasion, the Israeli army have been targeted.

Very few perpetrators have been caught or prosecuted.

Last July, two suspects were arrested on suspicion of a 2012 incident in which vandals torched the door of a Trappist monastery in Latrun, some 10 kilometres from Deir Rafat.

They also scrawled “Jesus is a monkey” on a nearby wall, shocking the religious and political establishment.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli army said Monday it is to open a new investigation into the March 10 killing of a Jordanian judge by Israeli soldiers at a West Bank border crossing.

The probe will be carried out in coordination with Jordanian authorities, it said.

“The Israeli army prosecutor’s office has decided to open a new investigation into this incident,” an army spokeswoman told AFP.

“An investigation was carried out immediately after the incident in the form of witnesses being questioned,” the army said in a statement.

“But at the instruction of the political leadership, the military command of the Central Region [covering the West Bank] has decided to open a new probe.”

The shooting death of Judge Raed Zuaiter caused a furore in Jordan, which has a 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

Israeli troops killed Zuaiter, 38, at a border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, claiming he had attacked them and tried to take one of their weapons.

But his family, witnesses and Palestinian rights groups dispute the army’s account, saying he was killed during a row with the soldiers after they insulted him.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — US Secretary of State John Kerry flew in Monday to Tel Aviv on his latest mission to salvage peace talks after the Palestinians rejected an Israeli proposal for extending negotiations.

US peace efforts are teetering on the brink of collapse after Israel refused to free a group of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners under an agreement which brought the sides back to the negotiating table in July 2013.

Furious Palestinian officials have warned that unless Israel changes its stance on the prisoner releases, it could signal the end of the talks.

Kerry’s arrival in Tel Aviv came as the Palestinian leadership was to meet in the West Bank town of Ramallah to discuss the latest stand-off.

The unscheduled visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories came soon after a Palestinian official confirmed Ramallah had rejected an Israeli offer to extend talks beyond an April 29 deadline.

With his work cut out, Kerry is likely to hold meetings in Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Kerry’s team had been working with both parties to “agree on a path forward”.

“After consulting with his team, Secretary Kerry decided it would be productive to return to the region,” she told reporters in Paris shortly before departing for Tel Aviv.

Washington has been fighting an uphill battle to coax the two sides into accepting a framework proposal which would extend the negotiations beyond April 29 to the end of the year.

But the question of extending the talks has become intricately tied up with the fate of the 26 prisoners.

Just a day ahead of the expected releases, Israel said it would not free detainees convicted of deadly attacks unless the Palestinians would commit to extending the negotiations.

But the Palestinians say they will not even discuss any extension of the negotiating period unless Israel frees the prisoners.

The impasse has triggered “intense” US efforts to resolve the dispute, with Kerry speaking with both sides earlier on Monday.

Israel’s ‘blackmail policy’ 

Ahead of Kerry’s arrival, a Palestinian official told AFP the leadership had rejected an Israeli proposal to resolve the dispute that was laid out at a meeting of the two negotiating teams in Jerusalem on Sunday night.

“Israel made a proposal which was refused by the Palestinians,” he said.

“Israel is practising a policy of blackmail and linking its agreement to releasing the fourth batch of prisoners with the Palestinians accepting to extend the negotiations,” he said.

In exchange for Palestinian agreement to continue the talks, Israel had offered to free the fourth batch of detainees and to release another 420 others.

But that number would involve only common law criminals and not sick detainees, women or children. And it would not include political heavyweights.

And although the Israelis were offering a partial settlement freeze in the West Bank, it would not be extended to annexed East Jerusalem, nor would it cover construction where tenders had already been published.

“The Israeli proposal aims to continue the negotiations indefinitely, without any results, in parallel with continued settlement building,” he charged, saying such policies posed a “real danger” to the peace process.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fate of the US-brokered peace process would likely be sealed within the coming days, telling ministers: “Either the matter will be resolved or it will blow up.”

And he said any deal to extend the negotiations would have to be put to the Cabinet.

Also on Sunday, Kerry said the US would reserve judgement on the issues but that the time to make decisions was at hand.

“We’ll see where we are tomorrow [Monday] when some judgements have to be made,” he said.

It was Kerry’s first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since early January, although he has held face-to-face meetings with both Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Europe and the United States.

He also met Abbas last week in Amman.

TRIPOLI — Libya has released three rebel fighters who had boarded a tanker loading oil at a rebel-held port before it was returned to Tripoli by the US navy, an official said on Monday.

The attorney general ordered the release following comments by some lawmakers that this would help solve the blockage of oil ports by the rebels, Sadiq Al Sour, head of the attorney’s investigations department, told Reuters.

The eastern rebels, who have seized three major ports to press for a greater share of oil revenue and regional autonomy, had demanded the release of the fighters before starting any talks about lifting the blockage.

Three weeks ago, the rebel militia managed to load crude onto the Morning Glory tanker at the Es Sider port, which is under their control. US special forces later stormed the ship and returned it to Libya.

Sour said he regretted the release which had been made on political grounds. “These are people who committed crimes,” he said. “Now justice is entering political conflicts.”

The government and parliament had told the militia to negotiate an end to their port blockade or face a military offensive. The rebels had demanded the release of their men, the tanker returned and the threat of an army offensive dropped.

Tripoli has been trying to end the port blockage because the government badly needs oil revenue. The three ports previously accounted for more than 600,000 barrels a day of exports, adding to the effects of oilfield closures in the west.

The port blockade is one of many challenges facing the government which has failed to secure the country three years after the fall of Muammar Qadhafi.

DAMASCUS — Syrian army troops recaptured on Monday a key position in coastal Latakia province, a regime bastion, state television said, as rebels press a campaign in the region.

“Syrian army units have full control of Observatory 45 in the north of Latakia province and are continuing to pursue terrorist groups,” the state broadcaster said, quoting the military.

Observatory 45 is a strategic hilltop that overlooks several areas inhabited by residents from the Alawite community, the religious sect to which President Bashar Assad belongs.

State television reported live from near the site and broadcast pictures of dead bodies it said were “terrorists”, many of them foreigners.

Last week, the rebels seized the position as part of an offensive launched on March 21 in Latakia province, which had been relatively untouched by the widespread violence elsewhere in the country.

Rebel forces, including jihadists from the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, have also captured the Armenian town of Kasab and the nearby Kasab border crossing with Turkey, as well as the village of Samra, giving them access to the Mediterranean for the first time.

More than 300 people on both sides have been killed since the rebels launched their offensive, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The army has managed to install multiple rocket-launchers on Observatory 45, but fighting in continuing in the vicinity of the hillside,” said the monitoring group.

After a series of rebel losses in Damascus province, the opposition has shifted its focus to Latakia, where the army and pro-regime militias have rallied to defend the area.

On Monday, opposition forces fired Grad rockets at the Bassel Al Assad Airport for the first time.

The civilian facility is named for a deceased brother of the president and is near the town of Qardaha, the Assad clan’s ancestral home.

Assad’s father Hafez Assad, who preceded as president, is buried in Qardaha.

“The rockets landed near the airport without causing deaths or damage,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The conflict has become more complex with rebels once allied in their bid to topple the regime now fighting against each other.

In the past 10 days, fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have been locked in battle with fellow jihadists from Al Nusra Front in the northeastern province of Hasakeh.

The observatory said the death toll from the fighting has risen to 120, after fierce weekend clashes for control of Markada, a town on the border with Iraq, where ISIL has its roots.

ISIL seized on Saturday the town which lies on a key route through which the jihadists obtain supplies from Iraq.

Syria’s conflict is now in its fourth year, and more than 146,000 people have been killed since it began.

TEL AVIV — A Tel Aviv court on Monday found former premier Ehud Olmert guilty of bribery linked to a Jerusalem property development, in one of the worst corruption scandals in Israeli history.

At a lengthy hearing in Tel Aviv District Court presided over by Judge David Rosen, Olmert was convicted on two counts of bribery, making him the first former premier to be convicted of the offence.

The trial, which included 16 defendants and took place over two years, was linked to the construction of the massive Holyland residential complex when Olmert served as the city’s mayor.

In 2010, Olmert was named the key suspect in the so-called Holyland affair on suspicion that he received hundreds of thousands of shekels for helping developers get the construction project past various legal and planning obstacles.

The towering construction project, which dominates the city’s skyline, is seen as a major blot on the landscape and widely reviled as a symbol of high-level corruption.

“We’re talking about corrupt and filthy practices,” Judge Rosen said in the 700-page verdict which branded Olmert as a liar.

Olmert reportedly sat expressionless throughout the verdict as the judge spoke at length of a “corrupt political system which has decayed over the years... and in which hundreds of thousands of shekels were transferred to elected officials”.

According to the verdict, excerpts of which were seen by AFP, Olmert personally received bribes to the tune of 560,000 shekels ($160,000/116,000 euros at the current exchange rate), most of which was given to his brother Yossi by a middleman who later turned state’s witness.

“The state‘s witness bought [Olmert’s] ‘services’ at a price of 500,000 shekels which was transferred to him through his brother,” it said of the main sum, saying the transfer involved eight post-dated cheques of between 50,000 and 80,000 shekels.

Rosen also said the 68-year-old had lied to the court in a bid to “blacken the name” of the state’s witness in a verdict which found 13 of the 16 defendants guilty.

Olmert’s spokesman Jacob Galanti vowed to appeal, the Haaretz news website reported.

There has been no date set for the sentencing, although the court has ordered deliberations to begin on April 28 in a process which is likely to last several weeks, legal sources said.

Liat Ben Ari, one of the prosecuting lawyers, said it was “still too early” to say whether they would ask for the maximum sentence of seven years.

“Usually the punishment for bribery is prison. Obviously, we have to look at all the circumstances and the full verdict in order to reach a decision,” she told public radio.

Commentators said it was possible Olmert could face a jail term.

“You are talking about a man who has already been convicted of corruption in a previous case at Jerusalem district court,” said Moshe HaNegbi, legal commentator for public radio.

“I don’t see a situation, under these circumstances, where the prosecution does not ask for several years’ jail time.”

In July 2012, a Jerusalem court found Olmert guilty of breach of trust but cleared him on two more serious charges related to the alleged receipt of cash-stuffed envelopes and multiple billing for trips abroad.

He was fined $19,000 and given a suspended jail sentence for graft.

The Haifa-born politician was mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003, after which he served as a Cabinet minister, holding the trade and industry portfolio as well as several others.

He became premier in 2006, leading the centre-right Kadima Party into government, but resigned in September 2008 after police recommended that he be indicted in several graft cases.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Monday rejected a plea for bail by jailed Al Jazeera journalists, who denied links with the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood in a trial that has sparked international condemnation.

The journalists, who have spent nearly 100 days in jail since their arrest, are charged with spreading false news and supporting the Islamist movement of deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

“Please, get us out of jail, we are tired. We’ve been suffering in prison,” Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, the Cairo bureau chief of Al Jazeera English, told the judges.

He and his seven co-defendants, dressed in white prison uniforms, were briefly allowed out of the caged dock to address the court, in what Fahmy’s lawyer, Khaled Abu Bakr, described as “an unprecedented move in the history of Egypt’s criminal courts”.

The trial, in which 20 defendants stand accused, has sparked an international outcry and fuelled fears of a media crackdown by the military-installed authorities.

Australian reporter Peter Greste also pleaded to be released on bail, telling the judges “we only desire at this point to continue to fight to clear our names outside prison”.

“We would like to emphasise that we are more than willing to accept any conditions that you impose on us,” he added.

Producer Baher Mohamed said he wanted to be with his wife during her pregnancy.

“My wife is pregnant and she visits me in jail with the children. It is exhausting,” he told the judges.

“I want to be released on bail so I can be by her side.”

‘Not only about us’ 

At the end of the session Mohamed told AFP that “we are here representing freedom of expression”.

“It’s not only about us.”

The judges ordered that two defendants who claimed they had been tortured be examined by “independent forensic doctors”.

They then adjourned the trial to April 10 without granting bail to any of the accused.

Prosecutors insist the Al Jazeera journalists colluded with the Brotherhood, now designated a “terrorist” group, and falsely sought to portray Egypt in a state of “civil war”.

Fahmy said he cannot be considered as a terrorist or a Brotherhood member as he is a “liberal man” who drinks alcohol.

Greste also denied any links with the Brotherhood, saying he and fellow jailed journalists posed no threat to Egypt.

“The idea that I have a connection with the Muslim Brotherhood is frankly preposterous,” Greste told the judges, adding he had arrived in Cairo just two weeks before his arrest.

Eight defendants are in custody, and the rest are either on the run or abroad.

Greste and Canadian-Egyptian Fahmy were arrested on December 29 in a Cairo hotel suite they used as a bureau after their offices were raided by police.

‘100 days in prison’ 

Before the proceedings began, Greste’s brother Mike said the award-winning journalist was “strong... but 100 days in prison must have left its effect on him”.

Defence lawyer Mokhles Al Salhy said his clients had been doing their “job professionally and objectively” when they were arrested.

“They were covering violent clashes between protesters and security forces, as were all other channels. They didn’t make it up or fabricate it,” he told AFP.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged the authorities to release the journalists and respect freedom of expression.

“The authorities must stop invoking the fight against terrorism in order to persecute dissident journalists,” RSF’s Lucie Morillon said.

The trial of the journalists from the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera network comes against the backdrop of strained ties between Cairo and Doha since the army ousted Morsi in July.

Qatar was a close ally of Morsi’s government and the Brotherhood, and Egypt accuses the gas-rich Gulf state of backing the Islamist movement, including through Al Jazeera.

The authorities banned the pan-Arab broadcaster’s Egyptian channel after Morsi’s removal.

Monday’s hearing comes a day after Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim accused an Al-Jazeera editor of helping to leak classified intelligence documents, in a separate espionage trial involving Morsi.

The minister charged that Amin Al Serafi, secretary to Morsi, leaked the documents to Ibrahim Mohamed Hilal, who he said was Al Jazeera’s news editor and also a Brotherhood member.

Hilal allegedly facilitated a meeting between a Palestinian go-between, a Qatari official and an operative with an unspecified intelligence agency.

DUBAI — Yemen’s president in an interview published Monday defended the US use of drones against Al Qaeda in his country, despite criticism from rights groups and a parliamentary vote to ban them.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi also again accused Iran of supporting southern secessionists and northern rebels as Yemen undergoes a difficult political transition.

Drone strikes “have greatly helped in limiting Al Qaeda activities, despite some mistakes which we are sorry about,” Hadi told the pan-Arab Al Hayat daily.

The United States has launched repeated drone strikes on Al Qaeda targets in Yemen as part of its “war on terror” and in support of the army’s campaign against the jihadists.

The drone war, which has killed dozens of militants over the past year, has triggered criticism from human rights activists, who say many innocent civilians have also died.

The United Nations said 16 civilians were killed and at least 10 wounded when two separate wedding processions were hit in December.

The victims had been mistakenly identified as members of Al Qaeda, the UN quoted local security officials as saying at the time.

Following the deaths, Yemen’s parliament, which has limited powers when it comes to security policy, voted to ban drone strikes.

But Hadi insisted that using traditional warplanes against the extremist network could cause “much bigger losses”.

In the same interview, he told Shiite-dominated Iran to “keep its hands off Yemen” and to stop backing “armed groups” in the country.

“Unfortunately, Iran still meddles in Yemen whether by supporting the separatist [Southern] Movement or some religious groups in the north,” he said, referring to the northern Huthi Shiite rebels who fought six wars with central government forces since 2004 before signing a truce in February 2010.

In recent months, the rebels have clashed sporadically with tribesmen and troops in an attempt to spread their control further towards the capital.

“We had asked our Iranian brothers to review their wrong policy towards Yemen, but our demands have so far been fruitless,” said Hadi, adding that Sanaa is not seeking “escalation” with the Islamic republic.

Hadi has repeatedly accused Tehran of “trying to derail the political” process in Sunni-majority Yemen, where a yearlong popular uprising led to the 2012 ouster of former strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh after a Saudi-sponsored deal was sealed the previous November.

Both Shiite rebels and southern independence activists, demanding a return to the independence they enjoyed before union with the north in 1990, have rejected plans for a six-region federation decided by a presidential committee in February.