Lawyers for a Tunisian woman allegedly raped by two policemen asked Monday for the trial to be delayed so threats to her family and information about the accused can be considered.

Emna Zahrouni told Monday's court hearing that one of the policemen on trial, Walid Feriani, "has a disciplinary record with the interior minister in a similar context.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohammed Badie Monday attended the first session of his second trial, his lawyer said, marking his first public appearance since he was arrested in August.

Badie, the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, appeared alongside 14 other members of the Islamist movement to face charges of inciting violence in the Cairo neighborhood of Bahr al-Aazam that led to deadly clashes in July, lawyer Mohammed Damaty said.

With its decades-old U.S. alliance strained over the Syria war and a nuclear deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia is calling on the Gulf monarchies to unite for their own self-defense.

U.S. Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel, visiting Saudi Arabia on Monday, has assured Gulf states that the agreement struck between major powers and Iran on November 24 will not affect the presence of some 35,000 U.S. troops in the region.

A Cairo court Monday acquitted a cousin and former aide of slain Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi of the attempted murder of two Egyptian police, judicial sources said.

Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam was detained in Cairo in March following a gunfight with Egyptian policemen in his apartment and was held despite Libyan demands for his extradition.

Moroccan police violently suppressed a peaceful protest in the Western Sahara against a planned EU fishing accord with Rabat that covers the disputed territory's waters, witnesses said Monday.

About 50 demonstrators, many of them women, gathered in the Laayoune city center on Saturday evening carrying banners and chanting slogans, including "stop taking our resources," one witness told Agence France Presse by phone.

U.N. rights experts demanded Monday that Baghdad get to the bottom of what happened to seven Iranian opposition members missing since a September attack on a refugee camp in Iraq.

"We call upon the government of Iraq to speed up the investigations in order to disclose the fate and whereabouts of the individuals," the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances said in a statement.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius played down expectations Monday for next month's talks in Geneva on the Syrian conflict, saying he doubted they would mark a breakthrough.

The "Geneva 2" meeting is slated for January 22 and aims to bring together Syria's opposition and President Bashar Assad's regime to try to end the country's nearly three-year civil war.

U.S. proposals on security presented by Secretary of State John Kerry will lead to the "total failure" of peace talks with Israel, a senior Palestinian official told Agence France Presse on Monday.

"These ideas will drive Kerry's efforts to an impasse and to total failure because he is treating our issues with a high degree of indifference," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top official with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, referring to the U.S. diplomat's proposals on future security arrangements in the Jordan Valley.

Jihadist fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have executed a man in Syria's Idlib province after accusing him of blasphemy, a monitoring group said Monday.

"ISIL executed Ibrahim Qassum, a heating oil vendor, by shooting him in the head... on allegations of blasphemy, two days after their forces arrested him," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syrian regime troops have regained control of the key Damascus-Homs highway after seizing most of the town of Nabak in the Qalamoun region, a monitoring group said on Monday.

Syria's Al-Watan newspaper meanwhile said authorities had taken full control of Nabak and expected to reopen the highway shortly.