NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New Jersey-based man was sentenced on Tuesday to 17 months in prison for helping the broadcasting of Hezbollah television channel Al Manar, which the United States deems a terrorist organization.

After initially pleading innocent, Saleh Elahwal changed his plea to guilty and said that between about September 2005 and August 2006 he helped provide satellite transmission services through New York-based HDTV Ltd to the Beirut-based channel in return for thousands of dollars in payment.

Elahwal was sentenced in Manhattan federal court.

U.S. prosecutors said Elahwal worked with Javed Iqbal, a Pakistani living in New York who owned the small satellite television company. Iqbal received five years in prison in April.

Both men initially pleaded innocent then changed their pleas to guilty on a charge of providing material support to Hezbollah. Both faced a maximum of 15 years in prison.

Legal observers and lawyers for both men have said it was the only terrorism-related case in the U.S. courts they knew of that had been brought against persons providing satellite services and that it raised questions of whether constitutional free speech rights were violated.

Hezbollah, an Iranian- and Syrian-backed Shi'ite Muslim group with a powerful guerrilla army, was designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization in 1997.

The U.S. Treasury Department branded Al Manar a terrorist organization in March 2006, saying it supported Hezbollah's fund-raising and recruitment activities.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney, editing by Michelle Nichols and Vicki Allen)