Tunis - Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's son-in-law will buy a nearly 40-per-cent share in the country's leading private media company, the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique reported Thursday.

The purchase would give Mohammed Sakhr al-Matri, 29, a controlling share in Dar al-Sabbah, the publisher of the Arabic-language daily al-Sabbah and the French-language daily Le Temps. Dar al-Sabbah also publishes a weekly edition of al-Sabbah and the weekly magazine Sabbah al-Khir.

Tunis  - The Tunisian court of appeals on Saturday postponed hearing the case of Sadok Chourou, former leader of a Tunisian Islamist party banned in the 1990s, his lawyer said.

Attorney Samir Ben Omar told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the court agreed to postpone the hearing until March 23 in response to a request from Chourou's
20-member defence team, which sought more time to prepare the case. The court rejected a request to free Chourou.

Tunis - The former leader of a Tunisian Islamist party banned in the 1990s is expected to, on Saturday, appeal a judge's decision to jail him just weeks after his release from prison, his lawyer told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Friday.

Lawyer Sami Ben Omar told dpa that Sadok Chourou, 62, would appeal a one-year prison sentence passed against him on December 13, little more than a month after he was conditionally released after serving 17 years in prison.

Chourou was the leader of Tunisia's Islamist al-Nahda, or "Renaissance," Party when Tunisian authorities banned it in 1991. Military courts sentenced him and hundreds of other members to prison on charges of seeking to establish an Islamic state in Tunisia in the early
1990s.

Valletta, Malta - Dozens of Tunisian would-be immigrants awaiting deportation from Malta on Thursday set mattresses on fire and smashed window panes at an immigrant detention centre, officials said.

Maltese police and soldiers cordoned off the area around the Lyster Barracks centre, amid reports that some of the immigrants had escaped.

The incidents were sparked off by members from a group of 71 Tunisians who are demanding to be repatriated, but whose documentation has not been sorted out, a Home Affairs Ministry spokesman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Tozeur, Tunisia  - Two beeps issue from the backpack in the pebbly Tunisian desert. A text message says that the cell phone is tuned to an Algerian network. How marvellous to have cell-phone reception even in the middle of nowhere!

But wait... Algeria is nearby? A slight sense of unease arises. Did not the travel advisory on the website of the foreign ministry back home warn of dangers in Tunisian regions close to the Algerian border?

Tozeur, Nefta, Douz, and the mountain oases of Chebika, Tamerza and Mides are all on the edge of the Sahara Desert. In terms of tourism, this is not always a plus when many people nowadays associate desert tours with kidnappings.

Copenhagen - One of two Tunisian nationals held on suspicion of planning to murder a Danish newspaper cartoonist has voluntarily left Denmark, his lawyer said Friday.

The two Tunisians were arrested in February after the Danish security and intelligence service PET said it had uncovered a plot to murder cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

Westergaard's controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban was one of 12 images published in September 2005 by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. They sparked worldwide violent protests in 2006 and Danish companies were boycotted in many Muslim countries.

The two suspects faced deportation to Tunisia as threats to state security.