New Yorker arrested for broadcasting Hizbollah TV
Tad
US authorities have arrested a New York man for broadcasting Hizbollah
television station al-Manar. Javed Iqbal, 42, was arrested on Wednesday
because his Brooklyn-based company HDTV Ltd. was providing New
York-area customers with the Hizbollah-operated channel, federal
prosecutors said in a statement. It did not say how long Iqbal's
company had been providing satellite broadcasts of al-Manar, which the
US Treasury Department in March had designated as Specially Designated
Global Terrorist entity, making it a crime to conduct business with
al-Manar.
Iqbal has been charged with conspiring to violate the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act, the statement said. Federal authorities
searched HDTV's Brooklyn office and Iqbal's Staten Island home,
where Iqbal was suspected of maintaining satellite dishes, the
statement said. The US Treasury Department froze US assets of al-Manar
in March, saying it supported fund-raising and recruitment activities
of Hizbollah, a Shiite Muslim group backed by Syria and Iran that has
been at war with Israel in southern Lebanon.
Tad
November 5, 2003, 15 days into an investigation by the ABA on
accusations of "broadcast programs that are likely to incite or
perpetuate hatred against or gratuitously vilify any person or group on
the basis of their ethnicity, nationality, race or religion". The
report for this investigation was never finalised as TARBS had gone
into receivership by that time. Al-Manar is not licenced for broadcast
in Australia
http://www.stopterroristmedia.org/News/DocumentQuery.aspx?DocumentTypeID=357
Tad
violence and racist and anti-Semitic programming, the European Union
and the governments of France, Spain, and Holland have determined that
al-Manar violated European law. This led four European satellite
providers to discontinue transmission of the station. Four other
satellite providers, based in Hong Kong, Australia, Barbados, and
Brazil, also terminated their broadcasting of al-Manar. And, after
being alerted to their advertising on the terrorist station, some of
the world's best-known multinationals discontinued almost $2 million
in annual corporate advertising.
Despite the Israeli air strikes, al-Manar continues broadcasting in
Lebanon through its terrestrial infrastructure as well as throughout
the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa, thanks to the continued
transmission of the station by ARABSAT, a satellite company that is
majority owned by the Saudi government, and Nilesat, majority owned by
the Egyptian government. Despite numerous entreaties from U.S.
government officials, these supposed U.S. allies in the global war on
terrorism have refused to end the Al Manar satelite world broadcasts.
Arabic speakers in the restive suburbs of London, Paris, Madrid,
Brussels, Berlin, and other centers of jihadist activity have full and
free access to Hezbollah's messages of hate and incitement