Despite the fact that Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah is designated by the United States, German companies are hosting propaganda websites of this Iranian proxy, through which it is continuously spready anti-US, anti-West, anti-Semite and anti-Israel propaganda contents.
In a report, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) said, the English and Arabic website for Lebanese Hezbollah-owned-and-operated Al-Manar television uses a Lebanese registrar for its domain name and hosts files for its servers in Germany, according to a WhoIs domain lookup.
This comes despite the fact that Al-Manar TV is subject to US sanctions as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity. Al-Manar is not specifically designated under Germany or EU sanctions, but the entirety of Lebanese Hezbollah is sanctioned by the German government, while its armed wing is sanctioned by the European Union.
German authorities banned the broadcasting of Al-Manar in 2008. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, the ministry said Al-Manar television programming was forbidden under Article 9 of Germany’s constitution, which says that organizations cannot operate with the purpose of violating “international understanding”.
According to media reports, in April 2020 Germany banned all Hezbollah activity on its soil and designated the Iran-backed group a terrorist organization.
Police also conducted raids on mosque associations in cities across Germany which officials believed were close to the heavily armed Shi’ite Islamist group.
“The activities of Hezbollah violate criminal law and the organization opposes the concept of international understanding”, said the interior ministry in a statement.
The move means that Hezbollah symbols are banned at gatherings and in publications or in the media and Hezbollah assets can be confiscated, said the ministry, adding as it is a foreign organization, it is not possible to ban and dissolve it.
Security officials believe up to 1,050 people in Germany are part of what they describe as Hezbollah’s extremist wing.
During raids, police searched mosque associations in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bremen and Berlin which they believe are close to Hezbollah and the private residences of the leaders of each association.
The associations under investigation were suspected of forming part of Hezbollah due to their financial support and propaganda for the terrorist organization, said the interior ministry.
MEMRI JTTM was able to identify the company hosting the servers of Al-Manar Television website by first pinging the web address of Al-Manar’s website. This search produced an internet protocol (IP) address. A WhoIs lookup of the IP address indicated the webhost for the site (e.g.: the company holding the files used for the site) as Velia.net, a German company whose website states it is located in the city of Hanau, according to data created in 2022.
According to German corporate records, it was established in 2003, and its majority owner is a Hong Kong-based firm also named Velia.net. Two German firms own smaller shares: Bayern Connect and Minds + Machines. Documents from Velia identify the company as an affiliate of US registrar giant GoDaddy. LinkedIn lists several office locations associated with Velia, including three locations in the US: St. Louis, Phoenix, and Miami.
Conducting a similar search using Domain Tools indicates that Terra.net, a Lebanese company, registered the domain for AlManar.com.lb. Domain registration is different from webhosting, in that the latter involves operating servers that save the files, whereas registering a domain merely involves reserving a web address for a specific site.
Some of the data mark as obvious the intent behind the registration. For example, the registrant organization was listed as the Lebanese Communication Group, which is classified by the US as an SDGT. The registrant name was listed as Ibrahim Farhat, who is the channel’s General Director and whose relationship to the organization has previously been documented by MEMRI TV.
The website was also registered with another email address with an Al-Manar domain name. That domain, manartv.com.lb, is just two letters different from the current address and similarly resolves to an Al-Manar site with a different IP address. Conducting a WhoIs lookup for that address indicates that the site is hosted by German firm Contabo, a cloud-hosting firm headquartered in Munich with offices in Australia, Japan, Singapore, the UK, and the US.
