Al-Bayan (radio station)
is now in Southern Mexico and Latin America

 

  Al-Bayan (Arabic: البيان‎‎) is Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant‘s (ISIL’s) official radio station,^[1] based in Iraq, owned and operated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which broadcasts at 92.5 on the FM dial. The station airs a news/talk format and broadcasts in the Arabic, Kurdish, English, French, and Russian languages.^[2]

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Sample from an English-language news bulletin broadcast in April 2015 on al-Bayan.

Originating from Mosul, Iraq, al-Bayan programs have been credited with being “highly professional and slickly produced” and have been compared to NPR and the BBC for tone and quality.^[3][4][5] Al-Bayan’s reporting on ISIL military operations have been referenced by the Associated Press and the Washington Post.^[6][7]
Al-Bayan went on-air in early 2015 with English-language news bulletins added to the multilingual programming lineup in April of that year.^[8][9] The station offers a wide range of programming including nasheed, Quran recitations, speeches, Fiqh, language instruction, and interview shows, interspersed with regular news bulletins and field reports from al-Bayan correspondents in Iraq and Syria.^[10] English-language news bulletins are delivered by an American-accented, male newsreader and datelines are read in the Islamic calendar.^[3]
Known frequencies (October, 2016) are: Iraq: Mosul 92.5/99.3 FM, Syria: Raqqah 99.9 FM^[11] / Libya: Darnah 95.5 FM (irregular), Benghazi 94.3 FM (irregular).^[12] The station in Mosul was reported to have went off-air after an air strike on it in late February 2017 as part of Battle of Mosul.^[13] Iraqi forces discovered the station in March 2017 in an upscale western Mosul neighborhood they captured. ISIL had burnt it down before fleeing.^[14]

Sister stations

In February 2015, ISIL captured a radio station called “Makmadas” in Sirte, Libya. It is unclear whether that station is still under ISIL management.^[15] An ISIL-owned satellite television station and a powerful radio station on 94.3 FM, also based out of Sirte and operating under the brand name “Al-Tawheed,” began broadcasting the previous October. Radio Al-Tawheed (former Libyan Jamahiriya Broadcasting Corporation transmitter) have 10 kilowatts output power and is received in Europe via sporadic E propagation.^[16]