But the American and Iraqi officials said he funneled some of the money to Sunni insurgents, and they suspect much of it helped him shift the programming on his channel, Al Zawra (“the gate” in Arabic), from popular music videos and dance shows to gruesome scenes.
Iraqi officials said Juburi made the switch to irritate his critics, and to try and buy himself protection from prosecution. “He started showing the insurgency videos just to be close to the resistance,” said Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab and speaker of Parliament.
Iraqi officials banned the station on November 5, focusing on its anti-Shi’ite footage and accusing it of “agitating the people against a large Iraqi sect with killing and genocide.” Since then, the station has become a pirate outfit, fleeing makeshift headquarters at least twice.
Some top American military officials say they have aggressively tried to find where the broadcasts originate to put an end to them, but so far they have failed.
-MARC SANTORA & DAMIEN CAVE
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