The Special Clerical Court in Hamadan, in north-west Iran, has sentenced Sunni Kurdish cleric Hossein Ali-Moradi to 16 months in prison.

Ali-Moradi, who is the director of the Ebrahim Khalilollah School of Religious Studies in Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province, was charged with “acting against national security” and “propaganda against the state”.

In April, in a separate case, the court sentenced Ali-Moradi to two years of suspended imprisonment on charges of “disturbing public opinion”.

The Special Clerical Court in Hamadan summoned the cleric on several occasions in March, on 4 April and at the end of November.

In an earlier incident in May 2020, Ali-Moradi and his son, Mohammad Saheb Ali-Moradi, were summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence.

While the cleric was released after several hours of questioning, his son was interrogated for several weeks in the ministry’s detention centre.