Kenya's Christian-owned Hope FM radio hacked

Correspondent | Wednesday January 28, 2015 10:00

 

Hope FM said on its Facebook account that a 'foreign signal' had interfered with its broadcast on Tuesday night.

It resumed transmission about three hours later.

Last week, a hacker infiltrated the website of Kenya's privately owned The Star paper and posted terror-related material on it, local media reported.

The newspaper had reprinted a cartoon of controversial French magazine Charlie Hebdo depicting the Prophet Muhammad, causing outrage among many Muslim readers.

Kenyan government cyber-crime experts confirmed to local media that Hope FM's signal had been hijacked and said a thorough investigation was being conducted into the incident.

Many of the station's listeners expressed concern about the hijacking on social media.

Hope FM, which broadcasts from Kenya's capital, Nairobi, is owned by a Pentecostal church.

In 2006, hooded men petrol-bombed its offices, killing a security guard.

Militant Islamists killed 12 people in an attack on Charlie Hebdo's Paris offices on 7 January.

They accused the magazine of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad.