Intelsat officials met with Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the United States April 10 to discuss steps to halt the unauthorized use of one an Intelsat satellite by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a Sri Lanka-based terrorist group, Intelsat announced.
The U.S. State Department lists the LTTE as a foreign terrorist organization, and the Sri Lanka Embassy and Intelsat agree that these illegal transmissions are a violation of Sri Lankan and U.S. laws.
“Intelsat does not tolerate terrorists or others operating illegally on its satellites,” Phillip Spector, Intelsat’s general counsel, said in a statement. “Since we first learned of the LTTE’s signal piracy, we have been actively pursuing a number of technical alternatives to halt the transmissions. We are clear in our resolve to ending this terrorist organization’s unauthorized use of our satellite.”