Mirdamadi has been held in solitary confinement in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Ward 2-A at Evin Prison since his arrest on May 10, 2014, according to news reports. On July 27, 2014, the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced him to six years in prison on charges of “propaganda against the state” and “assembly and collusion against national security,” according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
The journalist had appealed the conviction, Mirdamadi’s lawyer told the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency on October 7, 2014, but no date had been set to hear the appeal.
Mirdamadi had worked for now-defunct reformist newspapers such as Toos and Hayat-e No, according to the reformist news website Kaleme. He left Iran after the disputed 2009 presidential election, but wrote for the reformist news outlet Radio Zamaneh, which is based in Amsterdam, and had also given guest interviews to Farsi media outside Iran, according to Radio Farda. In his work, Mirdamadi criticized the views and policies of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
He returned to Iran shortly after the election of President Hassan Rouhani in 2013. Mirdamadi was summoned and interrogated several times before he was eventually arrested. News accounts did not specify which of his stories had led to the charges.
Mirdamadi is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. He suffers from neck pain and was hospitalized on May 12, 2015. According to Saham News, Mirdamadi had surgery to remove a metal fragment from his neck on May 23, 2015.
On July 27, 2015, the journalist was granted a five-day furlough to spend time with his family. Mirdamadi’s wife and children had traveled to Iran from France to visit him, according to local media.