A Saudi court has jailed an al-Qaida-linked jihadist for 16 years for plotting to kill the kingdom's grand mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh, and other clerics, media said Wednesday.

The sentence, which includes 40 lashes and a 16-year travel ban, was handed down on Tuesday by a court in Riyadh specializing in terrorism cases, the local Okaz daily reported.

A Dutch couple were heading home from Yemen Wednesday after their six-month kidnapping ordeal came to an end.

The couple -- Judith Spiegel and Boudewijn Berendsen -- boarded a plane before dawn heading to Amsterdam via Cairo, a Dutch diplomat said.

A decade after Saddam Hussein's arrest, the now-executed Iraqi dictator's legacy of conflicts, sanctions and repression still exact a heavy toll on the country.

And as oil-rich Iraq grows increasingly important to the global economy and regional diplomacy, his legacy of a slow-moving, hierarchical bureaucracy and corrupt decision-making processes have hamstrung a country looking to rebuild.

Syria's army on Tuesday trained its sights on the town of Yabrud, the last rebel stronghold in the strategic Qalamoun region near Lebanon's border, after a string of battlefield victories.

The town is believed to be where a group of nuns from the historic Christian hamlet of Maalula have been transferred, reportedly in the hands of jihadist rebels from al-Nusra Front.

Three Sudanese have been jailed for three to five years for arson and looting during fuel-price protests in September, police said Tuesday.

Theirs were among the first major sentences handed down for the worst urban unrest of President Omar al-Bashir's 24-year rule.

Syria's largest Islamist rebel force seized a crossing on the Turkish border Tuesday from other rebels, including brigades loyal to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamic Front, a new grouping of the most powerful Islamist rebel groups battling to overthrow President Bashar Assad, seized the Bab al-Hawa crossing in northwestern Syria.

Egypt said Tuesday it has granted three-month residence permits to 171 out of a total of 206 Syrian and Palestinian immigrants who were detained for illegally entering the country.

Foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said the Syrians and Palestinians had entered Egyptian waters "under the pretense of being tourists, with the intention of passing through Egypt and illegally immigrating to other countries."

Syrian opposition leader Ahmed Jarba on Tuesday appealed for urgent help for the Syrian opposition and civilians as he took part in the opening session of the 34th Gulf Cooperation Council Summit in Kuwait.

"The Syrian people need you today to tell the whole world that the Syrian regime will have no future in the country," said Jarba, who also thanked Kuwait for launching an "aid fund" without providing any details.

Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah opened an annual summit of wealthy Gulf states on Tuesday with a call for an end to the "human catastrophe" in Syria.

Sheikh Sabah, who gave a share of the spotlight at the Gulf Cooperation Council summit to the head of Syria's main opposition bloc, also condemned the United Nations for failing to halt the 33-month conflict.

Iran on Tuesday dismissed an offer from Israel's president to meet his Iranian counterpart as a propaganda ploy to ease Israeli isolation over a nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers.

"This propaganda to help the regime out of isolation will prove fruitless," foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told reporters.