IRANIAN human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been jailed for conspiracy and insulting the the country’s supreme leader but there is growing confusion over her sentence.

According to Ms Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, she was sentenced to 38 years in prison and will receive 148 lashes.

On Facebook he stated that Ms Sotoudeh was sentenced in two separate cases, the first one resulting in a five-year jail sentence and the second in a 33-year sentence. However, Iranian media declared she had been sentenced to seven years in prison.

Judge Mohammad Moghiseh chimed in to the confusion, saying “Sotoudeh has been sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring against the system and sentenced to two years in prison for insulting Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei].”

Ms Sotoudeh’s sentencing caused speculation online, with one person tweeting: “Sotoudeh’s crime is that she got into an argument with Hossein Shariatmadari in court,” referring to the editor of the Kayhan newspaper, a Khamenei stooge.

Others pointed out that Ms Sotoudeh’s sentencing fell on the first day in office of hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi as the new chief of Iran’s judiciary.

An Amnesty International spokesman said that Ms Sotoudeh’s conviction was due to her “defending human rights, defending the rights of individuals, opposition to the inhumane punishment of execution, opposition to discriminatory laws [and opposition] to the humiliating compulsory hijab.”

Ms Sotoudeh was previously arrested in June 2018 and told that she had already been sentenced in absentia to five years in prison. Her husband said they had no awareness of what the charges against her were.

She was also arrested in 2010 and sentenced to 11 years for her work as a lawyer. She spent three years of the sentence in prison and was released early.