Iraqi TV channel praising Saddam Hussein drops off satellite airwaves The head of al-Lafeta TV, which aired the Saddam Channel, has denied that it is bankrolled by Ba'athists
Associated Press Dec 1, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/30/saddam-hussein-television-baghdad-iraq A mysterious television channel praising Saddam Hussein dropped off satellite airwaves today, three days after it began broadcasting to Iraq. However, the chairman of the so-called Saddam Channel told the Associated Press it would return by the weekend after a technology upgrade to make the broadcast stronger. In Iraq the website of a political coalition led by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, jeered at what it predicted was the end of the TV channel, which began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar's anniversary of Saddam's 2006 execution. "This Ba'athist channel said goodbye [within] days of its starting," said the statement on the website of the State of Law Coalition, which is led by Maliki, a Shia. "We salute our national government if it participated to close this channel." The head of al-Lafeta TV, which aired the Saddam Channel, has denied that it is bankrolled by Ba'athists, the Sunni-dominated political party that Saddam once led. Muhammad Jarboua, an Algerian who claims to head the channel, said in a telephone interview from Syria that it was only temporarily halted. "We're opting for a more advanced technology and we asked for the broadcast to be cut in the meantime for four days," Jarboua said today. He said the new technology would improve the channel's viewing quality. Jarboua has denied that the channel is a Ba'ath party tool, but has gone to great lengths to hide the location of its studios and its funding sources. The station, which broadcast still pictures of Saddam and his family set to his speeches and poems, went down one day after AP reported that it began broadcasting across the Arab world on Friday, the first day of Eid al-Adha for Sunni Arabs. The day the most important holiday of the shifting Islamic calendar also coincided with Saddam's execution by hanging in 2006. ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Internet: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
