Jordan on Tuesday 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 regime on social media.

Qunaibi, a 40-year-old Kuwaiti-born Jordanian, was arrested in mid-June for posting an audio message entitled “Jordan on the brink of the abyss” on his Facebook page.

In it he criticized Jordanian relations with Israel as well as what he called the “Westernization” of Jordanian society.

The two-year sentence for Qunaibi, who holds a doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Houston in the United States, was later increased to three years on appeal.

But the State Security Court reduced the sentence and freed Qunaibi based on time already served, his lawyer Abdelkader al-Khatib told 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 peace treaty in 1994, but it continues to come under scrutiny in Jordan, where the parliament has remained openly hostile to Israel.

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.

Nevertheless, Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Yair Golan recently said that Israel has seen “unprecedented” intelligence cooperation with both Jordan and Egypt, another country with which Israel has a peace treaty.