Egypt's NileSat Takes Al-Zawraa, Militant Iraqi TV Channel, Off Air
By Andrew Cochran
On January 26, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross passed on a story from the BBC that al-Zawraa TV, a 24-hour station set up by the Islamic Army of Iraq and subordinate to the Mujahideen Shura Council, had been picked up by Saudi-run Arabsat. Daveed and Nick Grace had written about al-Zawraa in a January Daily Standard article.
The BBC story noted that Egypt's NileSat was already broadcasting al-Zawraa and quoted an unnamed American official saying, "Al-Zawraa is glorifying the killing of American and Iraqi government officials, which we strongly object to. This needs to be taken care of. . . . This should never have been on air in the first place, much less over the satellite of a country that professes to be a friend of the United States."
Today, Lebanon's Daily Star reports that NileSat has removed al-Zawraa, with this explanation: "'The Iraqi Al-Zawraa satellite channel on NileSat 101 was cut off after it repeatedly interfered with the transmission of several other channels,' the state-owned Al-Gomhuriyah newspaper reported. It said several channels had been experiencing transmission problems that were traced to Al-Zawraa. The channel was initially disconnected on Thursday and the problems stopped immediately."
Good move by the Egyptians. Et tu, Saudis?
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