Al-Manar may lose its French TV license again

01 Dec 2004

Only days after being allowed back on air, the Lebanese TV station Al-Manar might lose its satellite broadcast license again. The French audiovisual regulator CSA announced on Tuesday that is was seeking to pull Al-Manar off the satellite Eutelsat, which broadcasts all over the European Union, because of license violations. The CSA said it would ask France's superior administrative court to order the Eutelsat satellite company "to cease transmitting the station." According to the CSA statement, the decision came after several "serious breaches to the contractual agreements" which the channel undertook to respect. The CSA cited a 23 November program carried by Al-Manar that quoted someone described as an 'expert on Zionist affairs', who warned of "Zionist attempts" to willfully spread dangerous diseases including AIDS to Arab countries.