Mehrnehad is from the Iranian region of Balochistan, where he works as a journalist for the reformist newspaper Mardomsalari (Democracy).
He is also the founder and chairman of an NGO organisation called Voice of Justice Youth Association (Sedaye Edalat), which uses peaceful activities to bring discrimination of Baloch people to the public's attention.
Last month, the Iranian judicial authorities announced that Mehrnehad had been sentenced to death for belonging to the armed Jondollah organisation, also known as the Iranian Peoples' Resistance Movement. However, there is no evidence to substantiate this allegation.
Mehrnehad was arrested in May last year after attending an open discussion meeting named "asking youth responding authorities".
He and other committee members of the Voice of Justice Youth Association were arrested at the time, for allegedly being enemies of Islam and working with Western powers to destabilize the Iranian Islamic regime.
All of the committee members were eventually released, aside from Mehrnehad, who was not allowed to see his lawyer or family until five months after his arrest.
The International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organisation Against Torture have condemned the death sentence, along with The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples' Organisation.
A Facebook has been set up to appeal against Mehrnehad's conviction. It now has 177 members.
The group's page reads: "With our deepest sense of urgency, we kindly appeal to you to do whatever is possible to spare this young civil rights activist from imminent execution at the hands of the Iranian regime.
"We appeal to the international community, human rights organisations, and civil rights activists in the world to call upon the Iranian government to remove the death penalty and immediately release Mr Yaghub Mehrnehad."
Earlier this year a 23-year-old Afghani journalism student, Sayad Parwez Kambaksh, was sentenced to death after an Afghan court ruled he had violated the tenets of Islam by distributing an anti-Islamic paper he printed off the internet. The "Defend Sayad Parwez Kambaksh" Facebook now has 1,282 members.
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