Shafaq News/ Al-Rusafa's Criminal Court on Sunday sentenced a brother of a former governor of Basra to seven years in prison for "insulting the Iraqi armed forces" in a post on social media.

A high-level source told Shafaq News Agency that Ismail Musbeh al-Waeli had been handed a seven-year sentence in absentia in accordance with Article 266 of the Iraqi penal code.

Last October, an arrest warrant was issued against al-Waeli after he accused Iraqi Chief Justice Faiq Zeidan of "cooperating with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and armed factions in Iraq."

The convict, a close associate of revered Shiite cleric Muhammad Sadiq al-Sar, is a brother of Basra's former governor Muhammad Musbeh al-Waeli who perished in an armed attack in the southern governorate in 2012.