Arab appeals jailing for consensual sex with Jew

Israel's supreme court has gone against the government to allow Arab Israeli author Ala Hlehel to travel to Beirut to collect a literature prize, court officials said on Wednesday.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had tried to ban Hlehel from making the trip because Lebanon is classified as an "enemy state" in Israel.But the supreme court ruled on Tuesday that the Arab Israeli's case was "extraordinary and unusual," lifting any ban.

An appeals court on Saturday upheld the death sentence against Bassam al-Haidari who was found guilty of contacts with former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert on the Internet to plot against Yemen.The court in Sanaa also confirmed a three-year jail term which a lower court slapped on an accomplice, Abdullah al-Mahfal, but it shortened a five-year sentence to three years for a third accused in the case, Imad al-Rimi.

A court on Tuesday sentenced a Kuwaiti woman to death for starting a fire that killed 57 women and children at the wedding party of her husband who married another wife.Judge Adel al-Sager read out the verdict against Nasra Yussef Mohammed al-Enezi, 23, at the court of first instance.Death sentences in Kuwait are carried out by hanging, but it would first have to be upheld by the appeals court.The woman who was not present in the court was found guilty of "premeditated murder and starting a fire with the intent to kill."

Yemen's supreme court on Saturday upheld the death sentence against a man convicted of killing a member of the country's small Jewish minority, a judicial source told AFP.Abdel Aziz Yahia al-Abdi, 39, was sentenced in June last year by an appeals court in Amran, north of Sanaa, to death by firing squad for the murder of father-of-nine Masha Yaish Nahari in the town of Raydah in 2008.The supreme court was presided over by judge Khamis al-Dini, the source said requesting anonymity.

Israel's Supreme Court on Sunday ordered the immediate release of 35 ultra-Orthodox Jewish men jailed for disobeying a court order on school integration.A copy of the court ruling posted on its website said the men were to be freed after leading rabbis reached a compromise over mixing Jewish children of Ashkenazi -- European -- descent with others whose families have roots in the Middle East, known as Sephardis, at a girls' school in a West Bank settlement.

Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu began a three-month jail sentence on Sunday for breaking the terms of his release and meeting a foreigner, judicial sources said.An Israeli court had in December sentenced Vanunu to serve three months community service or three months in prison, for violating the terms of his release from prison in 2004.The former nuclear technician, who served 18 years for disclosing atomic secrets to a British newspaper, had opted for community service but asked Israel's Supreme Court if he could perform it in Arab east Jerusalem.

The Arab co-director of an Israeli film nominated for an Academy Award has scandalised the Jewish state by saying that he does not see himself as representing the country at Sunday evening's awards ceremony.The film "Ajami", directed by Israeli Arab Scandar Copti and his Jewish colleague Yaron Shani is a contender in the best foreign film category.It portrays Jews and Arabs in the mixed Ajami district of south Tel Aviv, divided not only by religion but also by clan and ethnicity yet thrown together in the neighbourhood's criminal underworld.

An Israeli court on Tuesday reduced the jail sentence of hardline Islamist leader Sheikh Raed Salah after convicting him earlier this year of assaulting a police officer, his deputy said."The court refused to cancel the sentence but decided to reduce it from nine months to five months," Sheikh Kamal Khatib told AFP, adding that the sentence was set to begin on July 25.