A radical Arab Israeli cleric, once defended by Jeremy Corbyn as he was deported from Britain, has been jailed by a Haifa court for inciting violence.

Raed Salah was handed the 28-month prison sentence on Monday after being convicted last November.

The court ruled he should be imprisoned for 17 months, having already served nearly a year in detention before the conclusion of his trial.

Salah, who led the northern branch of the now-banned Islamic Movement in Israel organisation, is a pro-Palestinian campaigner who achieved notoreity in 2007 for comments appearing to promote the blood libel.

He can appeal the verdict, but while his lawyers said he considered the ruling “a continuation of the political persecution against me”, they told Haaretz he would not appeal the decision.

The charged had been filed against him after Israeli police said he had praised a July 2017 gun attack on the Temple Mount that killed two Israeli officers.

Salah achieved wider recognition in the UK in 2011, when he arrived in June despite an exclusion order against him issued by Theresa May, then Home Secretary.

He was supported at the time by Mr Corbyn, who defended him as a pro-Palestinian campaigner and accused newspapers including the JC of promoting “hysteria” about Salah’s record.

“The sadness is that his is a voice of Palestinian people that needs to be heard,” Mr Corbyn wrote in the Morning Star in 2011.

He added: “It’s time that Western governments stood up to the Zionist lobby which seems to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.”

But Salah was already notorious for using a speech at an East Jerusalem protest in 2007 to say: “Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread.”

The blood libel — accusing Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their Passover Matzot — is a centuries-old staple of antisemitism.

Salah was held by British immigration officers two days after he arrived in the country on his Israeli passport and held for 21 days before being released on bail.

An immigration judge later ruled in his favour and Salah left the UK for Israel voluntarily the following year.