Qatar’s top court has sentenced the leader of the country’s small Baha’i community to five years in prison for social media posts that prosecutors claimed “cast doubt on the foundations of the Islamic religion,” according to the Baha’i International Community (BIC).

A three-judge panel of the Supreme Judiciary Council handed down the verdict against 71-year-old Remy Rowhani on Wednesday. Rowhani, who suffers from a heart condition, has been held since April. Judges rejected a defence plea for leniency, BIC documentation shared with The Associated Press showed.

“This is a serious breach and grave violation of the right to freedom of religion or belief,” said Saba Haddad, the BIC’s representative to the United Nations, calling it “an attack on Remy Rowhani and the Baha’i community in Qatar.”

The ruling comes two weeks after UN human rights experts voiced “serious concern” over Rowhani’s detention, calling it “part of a broader and disturbing pattern of disparate treatment of the Baha’i minority in Qatar.” The experts stressed that “the mere existence of Baha’is in Qatar and their innocuous presence on X cannot be criminalized under international law.”

Rowhani, a former head of Qatar’s Chamber of Commerce, had faced earlier accusations over routine fundraising linked to his role in the Baha’i National Assembly. The latest charges involve posts on the Baha’i community’s X and Instagram accounts, including greetings for Qatari holidays and Baha’i writings.

Prosecutors argued the accounts “promoted the ideas and beliefs of a religious sect that raises doubt about the foundations and teachings of the Islamic religion,” according to the BIC.

The Baha’i faith — founded in the 1860s by Baha’u’llah, a Persian nobleman revered by followers as a prophet — promotes an interfaith credo. While accepted in many countries, it faces harsh repression in parts of the Middle East, particularly Iran, which bans the faith and has been accused by rights groups of influencing anti-Baha’i policies in places like Yemen, Egypt and Qatar.

From its earliest days, Shiite Muslim clerics have branded Baha’is as apostates. Persecution escalated after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, when many followers were executed or disappeared. Today, there are fewer than eight million Baha’is worldwide, with the largest number in India.

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With inputs from Associated Press