Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, but Syria is taking fellow-Arab nation Libya to court over alleged jamming of Syria’s satellite signals. Nilesat’s Salah Hamza, without naming any parties involved has diplomatically confirmed that there have been some instances of satellite interference lately. However, it seems Eutelsat may be in the firing line because of its carriage of the Syrian signals.BBC Monitoring is reporting that a senior source at Syria’s Zannubya Satellite Channel, which is said to be “a close affiliate” of former Syrian Vice President Abd-al-Halim Khaddam, has revealed plans to file a lawsuit in French and European courts against the Libyan Government for jamming the channel's transmissions.
In statements to London-based Quds Press, the channel's general director, Jihad Abd-al-Halim Khaddam, spoke of evidence that Libya has been jamming the channel's transmission and said: "Our channel's transmission via [Eutelsat’s] Hotbird satellite was jammed four times in a row.” He added that the independent Association for International Broadcasting, which monitored the situation, reported that the jamming activity originated from Tripoli. “Therefore, we are in the process of filing a lawsuit in French courts and the European Court [of Justice] against the Libyan Government and Hotbird's operators because they [Eutelsat] dropped our channel from their transmission list.”
Al-Khaddam explained that Libya's jamming of Zannubya is consistent with efforts to activate security ties he described as deep between Syria and Libya.