[feedforward]

In 2006, a satellite repairman in New York City was imprisoned for allowing people to watch the television channel al-Manar, which is run by a political party which holds over 10% of the seats in Lebanon's parliament - Hezbollah.

[nradov]

That's not what happened. Javed Iqbal wasn't imprisoned for allowing people to watch Al Manar. He pled guilty to received payments from Al Manar. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization, regardless of their political status in Lebanon.

https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/Decem...

[aftbit]

His name was Javed Iqbal. The charge was "providing material support to Hizballah". He plead guilty and was sentenced to 69 months. The government's story was that:

"From approximately 2005 through 2006, IQBAL, through a Brooklyn and Staten Island-based satellite transmission company he helped operate, HDTV Limited, provided satellite transmission services to al-Manar, in exchange for thousands of dollars in payments from al-Manar. IQBAL provided these services knowing that al-Manar is Hizballah's television station."[2]

It's hard to work out exactly what this means.

Another article[4] does some sleuthing and claims that Iqbal had an FCC licensed earth station that was uplinking in the Ku-band to "ALSAT". That implies that he was actually repeating the al-Manar broadcasts onto a satellite that had a footprint over the US.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism links[5] to some documents for the case, including the original indictment[6]. Some of the "overt acts" listed in this indictment included signing a contract in Lebanon in which his company agreed to provide broadcasting services for al-Manar in exchange for a fee. Additionally, he was charged with providing access to these broadcasts to satellite customers.

I wonder if he would have gotten in trouble if he had only done the latter - helped consumers to tap into al-Manar without actually being part of the technical broadcast chain.

Very interesting case, thanks for the rabbit hole!

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/nyregion/25tv.html

2: https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/newyork/press-releases/200...

3: https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/Decem...

4: https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/fbi-raids-backyard-interna...

5: https://www.investigativeproject.org/case/190/us-v-iqbal-et-...

6: https://www.investigativeproject.org/case_docs/us-v-iqbal-et...