A prominent Al-Jazeera journalist was being held in German police custody Sunday pending a court decision on his further detention on an arrest warrant issued by his native Egypt.

In a case that prompted angry questions about press freedom and German relations with Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, television journalist Ahmed Mansour was arrested Saturday at a Berlin airport having been accused by Cairo of committing "several crimes."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Saturday urged the resumption of Middle East peace talks, while warning that continued Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank damaged chances of a final deal. 

"What's important is that negotiations restart," Fabius told reporters during a visit to Cairo, where he held what he said were intensive talks with Egyptian officials on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Lawyers for Egypt's deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on Thursday appealed his sentencing to 20 years in prison for the arrest and torture of protesters during his mandate, one said.

Morsi, who was ousted by then army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in July 2013, was convicted in April over the protest outside a Cairo presidential palace in December 2012.

Egypt has granted presidential pardons to 165 people jailed under a controversial law governing the right to protest, a statement from the presidency said on Wednesday.

However, the list does not include any figures from the 2011 revolt that drove Hosni Mubarak from power and who were imprisoned under the law in a move that caused uproar among international human rights groups.

A roadside bomb killed an Egyptian policeman on Wednesday in the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish, police and medics said.

The province is a stronghold of loyalists of the Islamic State group.

Qatar expressed "deep concern" on Wednesday over a death sentence handed down by an Egyptian court against ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and called for his release.

The United States has branded the sentencing of Egypt's first democratically elected president as politically motivated.

Ten international rights groups have denounced a "renewed crackdown" by the authorities in Egypt on independent civil society groups that receive foreign funding or are critical of the government.

The authorities targeted all forms of opposition after the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, leaving hundreds of his supporters dead and thousands jailed.

The White House branded Egypt's sentencing of former president Mohamed Morsi as politically motivated Tuesday, in a sharp rebuke of its uneasy military ally.

"We are deeply troubled by the politically motivated sentences that have been handed down against former president Morsi and several others by an Egyptian court today," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday upheld a death sentence against ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi for plotting jailbreaks and attacks on police during the country's 2011 uprising.

The same court also sentenced Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, to life in prison on charges of spying for the Palestinian Hamas movement, Lebanon's Hizbullah, and Iran.

Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas has called for joint Lebanese-Jordanian action to establish safe areas in Syria to help the refugees return to their country.

“There is a need for joint Lebanese-Jordanian work to ask for safe areas in Syria,” Derbas told An Nahar daily published on Tuesday.