On Tuesday, Jordan freed an Islamist preacher who was imprisoned after criticizing the peace deal between Jordan and Israel, AFP reports.
The preacher, Eyad Qunaibi, was sentenced late last year to two years in prison for inciting hatred against the Jordanian government on social media.
Qunaibi, a 40-year-old Kuwaiti-born Jordanian, was arrested in mid-June 2015 for posting an audio message entitled "Jordan on the brink of the abyss" on his Facebook page.
The two year sentence for Qunaibi, who holds a doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Houston in the US, was later increased to three years on appeal.
The State Security Court reduced the sentence and freed Qunaibi based on time aleady served, his lawyer Abdelkader al-Khatib to AFP.
His conviction was denounced at the time by New York-based Human Rights Watch, which said the ruling "signals a harsher approach by Jordanian authorities toward speech-related crimes."
Jordan and Israel signed a peach treaty in 1994, but it continues to come under scrutiny in Jordan.
Several years ago, Jordan MPs unanimously demanded the government expel the Israeli ambassador from Amman as a punitive measure after detectives in Israel detained the mufti of Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.
By Ben Ariel
Editor's note: This article has been modified from the original.
