Rahmanian is the managing editor and the owner of Shargh (“the East”) newspaper. He was arrested while appearing in court in Mashhad following a court summons, and transferred to prison. He was released a day later on a US$20,000 bail.

The reason for the summons was a report published in the paper about a neighborhood in Mashhad. According to the report, this low-income suburban neighborhood is filled with prostitution and drug transactions.

The managing editor of Shargh had attended the court session once before, but it was during his second appearance that he was arrested because he allegedly failed to surrender bail during business hours.

The Deputy Prosecutor of Mashhad at the time stated that Shargh’s plaintiffs were a group of local women from the aforementioned neighborhood who believed the report depicted them as prostitutes.

“On the morning of April 28th, [I] went to the Mashhad Prosecutor’s Office, but before meeting with the Prosecutor, I was arrested and transferred to solitary confinement”, stated Rahmanian. “I was sitting in the waiting area reading my book. After an hour, a soldier approached me and asked me to follow him to the office. I was shocked when they began physically inspecting me. Then they transferred me to solitary confinement in the same building. I was really shocked. I went there [to the Office] by myself after a simple questioning summons, [but] now they’re keeping me in solitary confinement with no explanation.”

According to Rahmanian, he eventually met with the prosecutor. He explained that he was being detained because he had not yet surrendered bail. Although he was not aware of any bail in the first place, he had told them that he was ready to surrender it immediately, but they didn’t let him do so during business hours.

“They took me again to solitary, and when I objected they said, ‘In other rooms we keep addicts and murderers, you are better off here on your own’. After an hour, I saw them coming back with handcuffs, which left me in total shock.”

Based on Rahmanian’s account, he was transferred to the court the next morning, wearing a prison uniform and with handcuffs on his hands and feet.

It is worth mentioning that this heavily restrained method of transferring prisoners in Iran is generally only used when dealing with dangerous criminals, not journalists.

According to Rahmanian, the case is not even in the jurisdiction of the Mashhad courts and, if there actually was a complaint, the case should have been tried in the Media Court in Tehran.