Wordpress: 301 redirects add UTF-8 characters

during a site audit with ahrefs, we discovered some double slashes in URL issues.Strangely for 301 redirects the UTF-8 charaters:-%E2%80%9E-%E2%80%9Care added.

Example:https://website.com/content/%E2%80%9Ehttps://website.com%E2%80%9C

This happens to all redirects.I am out of ideas.Anyone able to help, to get rid of this issue?

The only plug-in we use for redirects is RankMath. No redirects configured.

RankMath Redirect settings:Debug Redirections: offFallback Behaviour: Default 404Redirection Type: 301Auto Post Redirect: on

This is the current htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}] RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</IfModule>`

WP Permalink Settings:

• Post name (https://website.com/sample-post/