Hezbollah's al-Manar Television in New York?

The US Attorney's office announced the arrest yesterday of a Pakistani national living in New York for the broadcasting of Hezbollah's television station al-Manar to his U.S. customers. 

In March 2006, the US government designated al-Manar as a specially designated global terrorist entity making it illegal to provide support to the terrorist station.  In December 2004, the U.S. State Department placed al-Manar on its Terrorism Exclusion List. 

Al-Manar is owned and operated by Hezbollah and financed by the Iranian regime.  It has an estimated 10-15 million daily viewers and broadcasts a steady diet of incitement to violence, glorification of suicide bombings and calls for death to Americans and Israelis. 

It has also been banned by a number of European governments for its racist and anti-Semitic programming which included a 28-part series played over the Muslim holy month of Ramadan depicting an Orthodox Jew slitting the throat of a Christian child and draining the child's blood to make food for the Passover holiday. 

FDD's Coalition Against Terrorist Media, comprised of Muslim, Christian, Jewish and secular organizations - American and European - has worked with governments and the private sector to remove al-Manar from broadcasting on eight out of ten satellite providers, deny the terrorist station millions of dollars in corporate advertising and encourage the designaton of al-Manar as a terrorist organization.

More information on the arrest can be found here, here, here and here.

UPDATE: Further information is now here.