An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced a prominent Facebook user to three years in prison with hard labour after he asserted on television that many married women in the conservative country were unfaithful.

Taymour el-Sobky was arrested last month and accused by prosecutors of slandering Egyptian women and damaging their honour. His comments on a popular evening talk show in December caused a furore.

“Thirty percent of Egyptian women are ready for immorality, they just can’t find someone to encourage them,” said Sobky, whose Facebook page called “Diaries of a Suffering Husband” has more than one million followers.

“These days, it is very normal for women to cheat on their husbands and seek it out … Many women are involved in extramarital affairs while their husbands are abroad,” he claimed.

Sobky’s comments included the suggestion that arranged marriages in traditional southern Egypt exacerbated the problem of infidelity because women ended up with men they didn’t know.

After the claim a masked man from the region appeared in a video carried on YouTube armed with an assault rifle, and issued a death threat against Sobky. (Reporting by Haitham Ahmed; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Andrew Bolton)