Journalists or active members of armed separatist group

Reporters Sans Frontier (RSF) is at it again. (Read what they did before.)

Two individuals (Adnan Hassanpour and Abdolvahed “Hiva” Botimar) from a well-known Kurdish armed separatist group (Pejak), similar to PKK in Turkey, are sentenced to death in Iran, and just because they have apparently written a few articles in a tiny local newspaper, RSF wants us to believe their verdict is because of their writings.

These are not my words, this is what their own lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, has told a Kurdish newspaper. He has also added that none of these two men are charged for their civil or journalistic activities. None are heroes and the people who want to make them look like a martyr have a political agenda.

Then the whole false story appears on the front page of the BBC news and everyone starts talking as if Iran is going to execute two innocent young men because of their writings.

But the BBC Persian, according to their lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, gives us some more detail about their initial charges: Smuggling arms from Iranian army storage outside to the outlawed separatist armed Kurdish groups, giving information about military compounds to Kurdistan-based armed opposition groups, having direct contacts with the U.S. State Department's staff, helping two suspects of terrorism in south of Iran escape to Iraqi Kurdistan. (Although BBC Persian's headline still talks about them as journalists, even though in the story this is rejected)

Has the BBC News started to love anything negative about Iran these days so much that they don't even bother to verify these dodgy reports, coming from these so-called watchdogs? Why haven't they even asked the Persian service about any of this?

Knowing the fact that RSF's reports are based on the judgement of its only Persian speaker, Reza Moini, who is himself a well-known victim of the Islamic Republic's crackdown n the leftists/separatists in the early 80s and has not been back to Iran ever since, should make every impartial journalist doubt about whatever RSF sends out about Iran.

And then the French Foreign ministry also jumps on the wagon and calls Iran on stopping the execution of the two 'journalists'. When was the last time Bernard Kouchner's ministry said a word about executions in United States, China, Saudi Arabia, and many more countries whose laws still acknowledge the death punishment.