Security forces arrested Madani, a former editorial board member of the long-defunct Iran-e-Farda magazine and the former editor-in-chief of the quarterly Refah-e-Ejtemaee (Journal of Social Welfare), and confiscated a computer hard drive from his home, news reports said.
The journalist was placed in solitary confinement after his arrest, Madani’s wife, Mansoureh Ettefagh, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran in March 2012. She also said their family had not been told of his condition in prison. The reformist news website Kaleme reported that Madani had been subjected to violent interrogations.
Madani faced trial on January 16, 2013, at a Tehran Revolutionary Court on charges of “propaganda against the state” and “assembly and collusion,” and offered a statement in his own defense, news reports said.
Madani’s wife told Kaleme in June 2013 that a Tehran Revolutionary Court had sentenced Madani to six years in prison in the southern city of Bandar Abbas and 10 years’ exile to the same city on charges of “assembly and collusion with the intent to commit a crime against national security” and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic to benefit regime opposition groups.” An appeals court upheld Madani’s sentence on February 19, 2014, according to the BBC’s Persian service.
In October 2015, the Supreme Court refused to grant Madani a retrial, his wife told ICHRI. The journalist’s retrial request was based on the fact that if the charges had been combined in one prosecution, he would have been released under Article 134 of Iran’s new penal code, under which a defendant should not serve more than the maximum punishment for the charge with the heaviest sentence, his wife said. Madani was sentenced on multiple charges.
Madani’s wife said the journalist had been denied furlough during his more than five years in prison, the ICHRI reported.