After holding a retrial, the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran has reduced the sentence for Iranian rights activist Arash Sadeghi, who has been diagnosed with cancer, to four years and three months in prison on charges for his activities related to nationwide protests.
Sadeghi's lawyer Ramin Safarnia said in a post on Twitter that following the retrial Sadeghi was sentenced to three years and seven months in prison for the charge of assembly and collusion against national security and an additional eight months for propaganda activities against the system.
Sadeghi, who has been imprisoned several times for his rights activism, has the right to request an appeal, Safarnia added.
Details of the court ruling were not immediately available.
The announcement comes after a retrial of the case -- which was ordered by the court after Safarnia lodged objections to the initial trial -- that saw the activist sentenced by the court on January 26 to five years on the first charge and eight months on the second charge.
Sadeghi, who was diagnosed with cancer during his previous incarceration, was released from prison a year and a half ago after enduring more than five years behind bars on two separate sentences totaling 19 years that were handed down in 2013 on charges of propaganda against the government, defamation of the supreme leader, and threatening national security.
A political activist while a student at Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran, he has gone on hunger strike several times, including in 2016 to protest the arrest of his wife, who was detained on a charge of writing fiction that had not yet been published.
Sadeghi was released in 2021 before being arrested again in October during protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while she was detained by morality police for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab.
Anger over Amini's death in September 2022 has prompted thousands of Iranians to take to the streets nationwide to demand more freedoms and women's rights.
The widespread unrest represents the biggest threat to the Islamic government since the 1979 revolution.
The news agency affiliated with the activist group HRANA said that more than 500 people had been killed during the unrest, including 71 minors, as security forces try to stifle widespread dissent.
Many high-profile activists, rights advocates, and intellectuals have also been arrested in recent months because of the protests, including Fatemeh Sepehri and Majid Tavakoli.