Filmmakers or spies? BBC answers

I was really surprised when I saw BBC's Jim Muir reported on Iranian documentary filmmakers who were detained in Iraq by U.S. forces alleged of spying on military activities. Two days later they were released without any explanation.

Because of the bad history of Iranian Radio and TV related reporters, who were frequently sent abroad to actually do intelligence-related activities, I never truly believed they were real filmmakers.

Therefore I can't convince myself that they were released because they were innocent. My guess is that they part of a political trade which can include some Al-Qaida members or at least they names, or it could be something else that I know.

But an online poll that I did on my Persian weblog about what my readers think about them, showed that I am not alone. More than 60 percent believe that they "had possibly done something wrong that had led to their detention". However only near 15 percent think that they "were innocent and had to be released." Another 19 percent weren't sure or had no opinion about it.

Even though these online polls are not inferable to any population sociologically speaking, but the fact that a particular range of people are my regular reader can illustrate that many of educated, young, and Internet-savvy Iranians, both outside or inside Iran, have the same hesitation about those filmmakers.

Aside from the poll results, one only needs to see what kind of people were backing them during the detention and who the cheerful crowds and personalities were present at the Airport when those bearded, Hezbollah-looking men returned: Ali Larijani, the head of IRIB and a close ally to the supreme Leader, and Gholamhossein Elham, the radical Islamist who is the spokesman of the Guardian Council. No need to say that a day later, they were hugging Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme Leader, and were warmly greeted by Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri, the prominent hardliner presidential candidate who lost to Khatami a couple of years ago.

This the first time I smell some sort of compromise in Jim Muir's reports for BBC News. Especially that it was 2,3 days after the report when the so-called documentary filmmakers were released.