Some 500 Jews are expected to travel in May to Tunisia's Ghriba synagogue, the oldest in Africa, reviving a pilgrimage scaled back last year amid security fears, the chief organizer said Tuesday.

"This pilgrimage is going to have a very important impact on tourism and its success will attract thousands of Jews in the future," Rene Trabelsi told Agence France Presse.

Jobless protesters in an industrial suburb of Tunis threw petrol bombs and stones at police trying to break up their sit-in at a cargo handling company, the interior ministry said Monday.

The protest was sparked by the publication at the weekend of successful applicants for job openings at a stevedoring company near the port of Rades, 15 kilometers (nine miles) south of Tunis, the ministry said.

The exiled brother-in-law of ousted Tunisian strongman Zine el Abidine Ben Ali regrets his role in the dictatorship and is prepared to face justice at home, news reports said Friday, quoting an open letter.

"I have written this letter to apologize, even if I know that in the eyes of many Tunisians, if not all of them, I am unfairly considered a criminal who looted the country before fleeing abroad," wrote Belhassen Trabelsi, thought to have headed a clan that embezzled government funds.

Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki commemorated the 10th anniversary of a deadly attack on an ancient synagogue Wednesday, a move welcomed by the Arab nation's tiny Jewish population.

On April 11, 2002 the Tunisian Nizar Nawar carried out an al-Qaida-claimed suicide attack on the synagogue at Ghriba on the Mediterranean island of Djerba.

Riot police on Monday fired tear gas and baton-charged protesters in central Tunis who defied a ban on demonstrations, in some of the worst violence in the city in months.

As hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets, the head of the Ennahda Islamist party which dominates parliament called on Tunisians to "be patient" and give the new government a chance to bring in reforms.

With a White House meeting, talks at a think-tank, and interviews with newspapers, Islamists unshackled by the Arab Spring are launching a new charm offensive to reassure a nervous Washington.

The rise to power of elected Islamists in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere has alarmed many Americans, who fear the emergence of Iran-style theocracies that would deny the rights of women and minorities and antagonize Israel.

Baton-wielding police on Saturday fired teargas to disperse a demonstration by thousands of jobless Tunisian graduates in the capital Tunis.

Protesters chanted "Down with the government!" and "Work, freedom, dignity", a slogan of the January 2011 revolution that toppled former strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

A military appeals court in Tunis Saturday upheld the convictions of Tunisia's ousted president and his top officials for torturing army officers over an alleged coup plot, judicial sources told Agence France Presse.

"The verdict was pronounced Saturday in a closed door session," said one of the defense lawyers, Abada Kefi, who said he would take the case to a higher court.

Tunisia's president Sunday prolonged a state of emergency imposed on January 14, 2011, the day the former regime fell, to the end of April, citing security risks, his office said.

"This decision was made after consultations with the head of the national constituent assembly and the head of government," President Moncef Marzouki's office said in a statement.

Arab economy ministers opened talks in Baghdad on Tuesday ahead of a regional summit, focused on increasing tourism as the spectra of the crackdown in Syria loomed over the meetings.

Arab League officials have insisted the March 27-29 talks, a pivotal moment as Iraq bids to re-emerge as a key Middle East player, will cover a wide range of issues, but Syria, where monitors say over 9,100 people have been killed in an anti-regime uprising, remains in the limelight.