Ahmad Zeidabadi is an Iranian journalist and secretary general of the Tahkim Vahdat political party. He was born in Sirjan, Iran, in 1966, and he received a Ph.D. in international affairs from Tehran University.
He has worked for a number of reformist newspapers and is known as “the dignity of journalism in Iran”. In 2011, Zeidabadi was awarded UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.

Zeidabadi was arrested in front of his children just two days after Iran’s 2009 presidential election, in which he had supported Mehdi Karoubi, the reformist candidate; he has only been allowed two short furloughs in the past two years. According to his wife, he was tortured in prison and kept in a very small cell that he said felt like a coffin.

The court sentenced him to six years of imprisonment, five years of exile to Gonabad, Iran, and a lifetime prohibition from journalism and political activities.