[Peace-discuss] Worse than Bush on civil rights

[C. G. Estabrook]

[If the Obama administration allows this to stand, they'll have outdone the Bush 
administration in public contempt for the Bill of Rights. --CGE]

	Freedom Of The Press In The USA?
	NY Man Admits He Helped Air Hizbullah TV
	By ASSOCIATED PRESS

February 04, 2009 "AP" -- -The Pakistan-born owner of a satellite TV company has 
pleaded guilty to providing material aid to a terrorist organization by letting 
customers receive broadcasts from Hizbullah's television station.

Javed Iqbal entered the plea in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday. He 
declined comment afterward. As part of the plea, Iqbal agreed to serve a prison 
term of up to six and a half years. Sentencing was set for March 24.

Prosecutors said Iqbal used satellite dishes on his Staten Island home to 
distribute broadcasts of Al Manar, the television station of the Lebanon-based 
organization that has been fighting Israel since the early 1980s.

Israel and the US consider Hizbullah a terrorist organization and accuse it of 
being behind deadly attacks in Lebanon and abroad.

Iqbal, 45, was born in Pakistan but has lived in the United States for more than 
20 years. He is a permanent resident with five children. A former New York 
Police Department officer was among those who signed his $250,000 bail package.

Although Americans are granted freedom of speech under the First Amendment to 
the Constitution, the government contended in this case that Iqbal was not 
entitled to arrange the satellite broadcast of an organization designated as a 
terrorist group, regardless of the message.

Lebanon's information minister, Ghazi Aridi, had criticized Iqbal's arrest, 
calling it an "attack against freedoms (that) robs a large section of people 
from watching a specific channel."

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