Kiavash Sotoudeh was an active contributor to the Narenji website. Narenji was a popular news and technology site, founded in 2007, which was later closed by the authorities. Narenji won the “Most Informative Website” award in the third Online Festival of Iranian Websites and in 2012 was awarded the “Best Persian Weblog” by Deutsche Welle.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which aims to protect civil rights in the online and digital world, published a report on its website which demanded the release of the writers, managers and members of the Narenji website.

Sotoudeh was arrested on December 3, 2013, along with his colleague, Jamshid Jabbari, in front of Kerman University by agents from the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization in Kerman.

The accusations against him and other detained members of the Narenji website were designated as “security-related” by judicial officials stating that they had links with “foreign networks” and “counter-revolutionaries.”

News sources had also reported that Sotoudeh and Jabbari had been arrested in connection with material they published that was critical of the government, their links with domestic Iranian churches and the promotion of Christianity in Iran.

The cases against Kiavash Sotoudeh and his colleagues were heard in Branch 6 of the Kerman Prosecutor's Office. They were accused of “establishing communications with members of media networks opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” "designing and updating educational sites for citizen journalists at the instruction of Western news networks and receiving funding from them,” “taking instruction from counter-revolutionary dissidents and designing websites that are against the principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran and sites that are related to the strife of 2009.”

Sotoudeh had not worked directly with the management of the Narenji website so he was released on bail. In June 2014, he was sentenced by Branch 6 of the Kerman Prosecutor's Office to one and a half years imprisonment, which was suspended for three years.