Mohammad Ali Dadkhah represented may supporters of the opposition and activists who were arrested after the presidential elections in 2009. He was also co-founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC) in 2001.
On 4 July 2011, he was given a nine-year prison term and barred from working as a lawyer for ten years. He was charged with attempting to overthrow the regime. The charges are related to his representation of arrested protesters. His prosecution could also be the result of his involvement in the foundation of the DHRC, since other founders have been prosecuted for the same reason.
Examples are the lawyers Shirin Ebadi, Mohammad Seifzadeh, Mohammad Sharif and Abdolfatah Soltani. The DHRC is presently led by Shirin Ebadi, lawyer and Nobel laureate, who took the initiative for the foundation of the DHRC and had to leave Iran because of the many repressive measures of its government.