SEATTLE — The Latest on the appeal of President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban (all times local):

1:05 p.m.

At his daily briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer declined to address questions on why President Donald Trump hasn’t disavowed his revised travel ban targeting some Muslim nations.

A three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle on Monday heard arguments in a lawsuit filed over the ban by Hawaii. The judges are being asked to overturn an order blocking Trump’s directive.

Spicer expressed confidence that the executive order will be upheld by the appeals court.

“The executive order is fully lawful and will be upheld. We fully believe that,” Spicer said.

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10:52 a.m.

Arguments have wrapped up in a federal appeals court in Seattle over President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

The three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had tough questions for each side.

They asked an administration lawyer about what one judge called Trump’s “profound” campaign statements calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

They asked a lawyer for the state of Hawaii challenging the ban about whether the national security rationale spelled out in the president’s executive order neutralized any claim that the travel ban was motivated by discrimination.

The judges gave no indication of when they might rule.

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10:26 a.m.

A federal appeals court judge is questioning a lawyer for Hawaii about past cases in which he argued that the president has broad authority over immigration matters.

Judge Michael Hawkins pointed to arguments that former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal made in previous cases.

Katyal said he stands by those arguments, but that doesn’t mean the president’s authority is unbounded.

The judges in Seattle are hearing arguments over Hawaii’s lawsuit challenging the travel ban, which would suspend the nation’s refugee program and temporarily bar new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

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10:12 a.m.

An attorney for the state of Hawaii says President Donald Trump has never repudiated his campaigns statements calling for a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S.

During arguments in Seattle, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Paez questioned attorney Neal Katyal about Trump’s statements, calling them “profound.”

But the judge wondered whether Trump is forever forbidden from adopting an executive order along the lines of his travel ban.

Katyal said no, and suggested the president could work with Congress on legitimate measures.

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10:06 a.m.

A Trump administration lawyer says the president’s travel ban is nothing like the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II.

Judge Richard Paez questioned Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall on whether the case wasn’t like one — now largely reviled — in which the Supreme Court upheld the exclusion of Japanese Americans.

Wall responded that Trump’s order is nothing like that, and if it were, he wouldn’t be defending it before the court.

The judges in Seattle are hearing arguments over Hawaii’s lawsuit challenging the travel ban, which would suspend the nation’s refugee program and temporarily bar new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

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10:01 a.m.

A lawyer for President Donald Trump says he has clarified campaign rhetoric in which he called for a ban on Muslims.

Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall told a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle that, in enacting his revised travel ban targeting mostly Muslim nations, that “over time, the president clarified that what he was talking about was Islamic terrorist groups and the countries that sponsor or shelter them.”

The judges in Seattle are hearing arguments over Hawaii’s lawsuit challenging the travel ban, which would suspend the nation’s refugee program and temporarily bar new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

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9:49 a.m.

A federal appeals court is peppering a lawyer for President Donald Trump about whether his travel ban discriminates against Muslims.

Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall says the executive order halting travel from six majority Muslim nations doesn’t say anything about religion, and neither the state of Hawaii nor an imam from that state who wants his mother-in-law to visit has standing to sue.

Judge Richard Paez asked Wall how Trump’s order can be squared with a federal law banning discrimination based on nationality in immigration.

Arguments are underway in Seattle over whether to reinstate the travel ban.

The hearings are being broadcast live on C-SPAN and other cable news stations.

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9:38 a.m.

Arguments are underway in Seattle over whether to reinstate President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall is telling a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the president has broad authority over immigration.

Judge Ronald Gould says each side has been allotted 30 minutes but will be granted more if necessary, given the significance of the case.

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8:45 a.m.

Advocates for refugees and immigrants are rallying outside a federal courthouse in Seattle where judges are scheduled to hear arguments over Hawaii’s lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban

Dozens of activists gathered Monday morning, some carrying “No Ban, No Wall” signs.

The protesters were on hand about an hour before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case. The judges will decide whether to uphold a Hawaii judge’s decision in March that blocked the ban.

Trump’s new travel ban would suspend the nation’s refugee program and temporarily bar new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

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8:20 a.m.

A courtroom at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle is starting to fill up in advance of arguments over President Donald Trump’s travel ban while protests were expected outside the building.

Three judges appointed by former President Bill Clinton — Michael Hawkins, Ronald Gould and Richard Paez — are due to hear arguments over whether to uphold a Hawaii judge’s decision to block the ban in March.

Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall will argue for the administration, while Neal Katyal, a former acting attorney general, will represent the state of Hawaii, which sued to block the ban.

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1:09 a.m.

For the second time in a week, government lawyers will try to persuade a federal appeals court to reinstate President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban — and once again, they can expect plenty of questions about whether the ban was designed to discriminate against Muslims.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled arguments Monday in Seattle over Hawaii’s lawsuit challenging the travel ban, which would suspend the nation’s refugee program and temporarily bar new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Last week, judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments over whether to affirm a Maryland judge’s decision putting the ban on ice. They peppered Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall with questions about whether they could consider Trump’s campaign statements calling for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

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The Syrian government has constructed and is using a crematorium at its notorious Sednaya military prison near Damascus to clandestinely dispose of the bodies of prisoners it continues to execute inside the facility, the State Department said Monday.

Thousands of executed detainees have been dumped in mass graves in recent years, said acting assistant secretary of state Stuart Jones. “What we’re assessing is that if you have that level of production of mass murder, then ­using the crematorium would . . . allow the regime to manage that number of corpses . . . without evidence.”

“We believe that the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass murders taking place in Sednaya prison,” he said in a briefing for reporters.

The Syrian regime, Jones said, “has treated opposition forces and unarmed civilians as one and the same,” continuing to “systematically abduct and torture civilian detainees, often beating, electrocuting and raping these victims,” and authorizing “the extrajudicial killings of thousands.”

The State Department distributed satellite photographs it said documented the gradual construction of the facility outside the main prison complex and its apparent use this year. Jones said that “newly declassified” information on this and other atrocities by the government of President Bashar al-Assad came from “intelligence community assessments,” as well as from nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International and the media.

“These atrocities have been carried out seemingly with the unconditional support from Russia and Iran,” Assad’s main backers, Jones said. Neither government commented on the new U.S. allegation.

[How a woman in England tracks civilian deaths in Syria, one bomb at a time]

Accusations of mass murder and incinerated bodies, evoking the Holocaust, contrasted with last week’s Washington visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. They were pictured shaking hands and broadly smiling with President Trump before an Oval Office meeting in which discussions centered on Syria.

The Russians also met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Jones said the release of new intelligence comes at “an opportune time to remind people about the atrocities that are being carried out inside of Syria all the time.”

The newly released information included a satellite photo of the snow-covered Sednaya complex with an L-shaped building labeled “probable crematorium.” Assessment of the facility, Jones said, included the presence of “the discharge stack, the probable firewall, the probable air intake — this is in the construction phase — this would be consistent if they were building a crematorium.” In a photo taken Jan. 15, he said, “we’re look[ing] at snowmelt on the roof that would be consistent with a crematorium.”

Jones said the information had not been shared with the Russians. He also said he was not suggesting that either Russia or Iran was involved with the facility.

But Tillerson, he said, “was firm and clear with Minister Lavrov. Russia holds tremendous influence over Bashar al-Assad. A key point that took place in that bilateral meeting was telling Russia to use its power to rein in the regime.”

“The regime must stop all attacks on civilians and opposition forces, and Russia must bear responsibility to ensure regime compliance,” Jones said.

Jones called Tillerson’s meeting with Lavrov “productive.” But “I would not say that they mapped out a specific way forward on how to address the issue of Syrian atrocities, or even how to move forward on the Geneva process” on the eve of the next round of years-long United Nations efforts to bring representatives of Assad and the rebels to the negotiating table, due to begin Tuesday.

One of Lavrov’s principal goals in last week’s meetings was to solicit Trump administration support for a cease-fire and the establishment of safe zones within ­Syria as part of a May 4 pact signed by Russia, Iran and Turkey. The Turkish government has backed anti-Assad rebels in Syria along with the United States, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to meet with Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

[U.S.-Turkish relations deeply strained ahead of Erdogan’s visit to White House]

Although Trump has also called for safe zones within Syria and said he discussed them early this month in a telephone call with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, the administration more recently has been publicly lukewarm about the Russia-led plan.

“In light of the failures of the past cease-fire agreements, we have reason to be skeptical,” Jones said. Earlier truces negotiated under the Obama administration were violated by both Syria and Russia.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump said the United States should concentrate on the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and cease involvement in Syria’s civil war. But he changed course last month, approving a cruise missile strike on a Syrian government air base after concluding it was used by Assad to launch a chemical weapons attack against civilians.

Jones described “the continued brutality of Assad” as a threat to the region, “as well as to the national security interests of the United States and our allies.” Asked if there is consideration of military action to destroy the crematorium, he said, “We’re not going to signal what we are going to do and what we’re not going to do.”

“At this point, we are talking about this evidence and bringing it forward to the international community, which we hope will put pressure on the regime to change its behavior,” Jones said.

Cease-fires under the Russia-Iran-Turkey agreement, in designated parts of northwestern, central and southern Syria, have largely held in recent weeks. But violence continues on other fronts not included in the plan, and suggests that Assad’s forces are positioning themselves to launch an all-out assault on the largest of the safe zones, Idlib province, when the deal breaks down. If that happens, almost a million displaced civilians could find themselves caught in the crossfire between pro-government forces and an al-Qaeda-linked coalition that appears willing to fight until the end.

More than 400,000 people have died in the Syrian civil war, according to the United Nations, with at least half the entire prewar population of about 22 million now living as refugees or displaced from their homes. Many of the dead are civilians killed by government action, including, Jones said, “well-documented airstrikes and artillery strikes, chemical weapons attacks, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, starvation, sexual violence, and denial of essential services such as food, water and medical care.”

According to “numerous” ­nongovernmental organizations, Jones said, “the regime has abducted and detained between 65,000 and 117,000 people between 2011 and 2015,” a period in which Amnesty International has said that nearly 18,000 detainees died. The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimated in March that at least 106,727 people were still arrested or had been forcibly disappeared.

Prisoners are held in a network of prisons across Syria. The Sednaya detention complex, run by Syria’s powerful military police about 20 miles outside Damascus, is the most notorious. A recent Amnesty International report described it as a “human slaughterhouse.”

Jones cited “multiple sources” in saying that “the regime is responsible for killing as many as 50 detainees per day at Sednaya,” where he said up to 70 people were packed in cells designed for five. Former prisoners have described mass hangings.

[A journey into Syria’s secret torture wards]

In interviews with The Washington Post, former detainees described conditions so atrocious that many prisoners died from torture, medical neglect or starvation.

Most political prisoners said they had been held in the “Red Building,” a facility the regime largely emptied of mostly Islamist and jihadist prisoners in the early months of the anti-Assad uprising that began in early 2011. Among those taken from the cells and hanged, former prisoners said, were students, engineers, activists and human rights lawyers.

Louisa Loveluck in Beirut contributed to this report.