"The accusations against my clients have no link to their journalistic activities and the two are accused of collaborating with armed groups hostile to the system," Saleh Nikhbakht told the ISNA student agency.

Iran's judiciary confirmed on Tuesday for the first time that Adnan Hassanpour and Abdolvahed "Hiva" Botimar were sentenced to death on July 16 by a revolutionary court in northeastern Kordestan province as "enemies of God."

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the two journalists wrote for the magazine Aso (Horizons), before it was banned in August 2005.

Nikhbakht said Hassanpour had no link to hostile groups and was not "mohareb", a Koranic legal term that is usually translated as "enemy of God."

Any accusation of "propaganda against the system" should be punished by prison and not death, he added.

Botimar had never made recourse to weapons and so he should not be considered an "enemy of God" he added, although he implied his client could have been involved in arms sales.

Kurds form a minority believed to be around several million people in Iran. Most of whom live in the northwestern provinces of West Azarbaijan and Kordestan on the border with Turkey and Iraq.

The border area is hugely sensitive, with Iranian security forces in recent years fighting banned Kurdish separatist parties, in particular Pejak, a group linked to Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).