California man confirms role in anti-Islam film
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The search for those behind the provocative,
anti-Muslim film implicated in violent protests in Egypt and Libya led
Wednesday to a California Coptic Christian convicted of financial crimes
who acknowledged his role in managing and providing logistics for the
production.
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, told The Associated
Press in an interview outside Los Angeles that he was manager for the
company that produced "Innocence of Muslims," which mocked Muslims and
the prophet Muhammad and may have caused inflamed mobs that attacked
U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. He provided the first details about a
shadowy production group behind the film.
Nakoula denied he
directed the film and said he knew the self-described filmmaker, Sam
Bacile. But the cell phone number that AP contacted Tuesday to reach the
filmmaker who identified himself as Sam Bacile traced to the same
address near Los Angeles where AP found Nakoula. Federal court papers
said Nakoula's aliases included Nicola Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others.
Nakoula
told the AP that he was a Coptic Christian and said the film's director
supported the concerns of Christian Copts about their treatment by
Muslims.
Nakoula denied he had posed as Bacile. During a
conversation outside his home, he offered his driver's license to show
his identity but kept his thumb over his middle name, Basseley. Records
checks by the AP subsequently found it and other connections to the
Bacile persona.
The AP located Bacile after obtaining his cell
phone number from Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the
U.S. who had promoted the anti-Muslim film in recent days on his
website. Egypt's Christian Coptic population has long decried what they
describe as a history of discrimination and occasional violence from the
country's Arab majority.
Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville,
Florida, who burned Qurans on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11,
2001 terror attacks, said he spoke with the movie's director on the
phone Wednesday and prayed for him. He said he has not met the filmmaker
in person, but the man contacted him a few weeks ago about promoting
the movie.
"I have not met him. Sam Bacile, that is not his real
name," Jones said. "I just talked to him on the phone. He is definitely
in hiding and does not reveal his identity. He was quite honestly fairly
shook up concerning the events and what is happening. A lot of people
are not supporting him."
The film was implicated in protests that
resulted in the burning of the U.S. consulate Tuesday in the eastern
Libyan city of Benghazi.
Libyan officials said Wednesday that
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other embassy employees were killed
during the mob violence, but U.S. officials now say they are
investigating whether the assault was a planned terrorist strike linked
to Tuesday's 11-year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Nakoula,
who talked guardedly about his role, pleaded no contest in 2010 to
federal bank fraud charges in California and was ordered to pay more
than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in
federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five
years without approval from his probation officer.
The YouTube
account, "Sam Bacile," which was used to publish excerpts of the
provocative movie in July, was used to post comments online as recently
as Tuesday, including this defense of the film written in Arabic: "It is
a 100 percent American movie, you cows."
Assistant U.S. Attorney
Jennifer Leigh Williams said Nakoula set up fraudulent bank accounts
using stolen identities and Social Security numbers, then checks from
those accounts would be deposited into other bogus accounts from which
Nakoula would withdraw money at ATM machines.
It was "basically a
check-kiting scheme," the prosecutor told the AP. "You try to get the
money out of the bank before the bank realizes they are drawn from a
fraudulent account. There basically is no money."
The actors in
the film issued a joint statement Wednesday saying they were misled
about the project and said some of their dialogue was crudely dubbed
during post-production.
In the English language version of the
trailer, direct references to Muhammad appear to be the result of
post-production changes to the movie. Either actors aren't seen when the
name "Muhammad" is spoken in the overdubbed sound, or they appear to be
mouthing something else as the name of the prophet is spoken.
"The
entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by
the producer," said the statement, obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
"We are 100 percent not behind this film and were grossly misled about
its intent and purpose. We are shocked by the drastic rewrites of the
script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened
by the tragedies that have occurred."
The person who identified
himself as Bacile and described himself as the film's writer and
director told the AP on Tuesday that he had gone into hiding. But doubts
rose about the man's identity amid a flurry of false claims about his
background and role in the purported film.
Bacile told the AP he
was an Israeli-born, 56-year-old, Jewish writer and director. But a
Christian activist involved in the film project, Steve Klein, told AP on
Wednesday that Bacile was a pseudonym and that he was Christian.
Klein had told the AP on Tuesday that the filmmaker was an Israeli Jew who was concerned for family members who live in Egypt.
Officials in Israel said there was no record of Bacile as an Israeli citizen.
When
the AP initially left a message for Bacile, Klein contacted the AP from
another number to confirm the interview request was legitimate then
Bacile called back from his own cell phone.
Klein said he didn't know the real name of the man he called "Sam," who came to him for advice on First Amendment issues.
About
15 key players from the Middle East — from Syria, Iraq, Turkey,
Pakistan, Iran and a couple Coptic Christians from Egypt — worked on the
film, Klein said.
"Most of them won't tell me their real names
because they're terrified," Klein said. "He was really scared and now
he's so nervous. He's turned off his phone."
The Southern Poverty
Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said Klein is a former Marine
and longtime religious-right activist who has helped train paramilitary
militias at a California church. It described Klein as founder of
Courageous Christians United, which conducts protests outside abortion
clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.
It quoted Klein as saying he
believes that California is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood sleeper
cells "who are awaiting the trigger date and will begin randomly killing
as many of us as they can."
In his brief interview with the AP,
Bacile defiantly called Islam a cancer and said he intended the film to
be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.
But
several key facts Bacile provided proved false or questionable. Bacile
told AP he was 56 but identified himself on his YouTube profile as 74.
Bacile said he is a real estate developer, but Bacile does not appear in
searches of California state licenses, including the Department of Real
Estate.
Hollywood and California film industry groups and permit
agencies said they had no records of the project under the name
"Innocence of Muslims," but a Los Angeles film permit agency later found
a record of a movie filmed in Los Angeles last year under the working
title "Desert Warriors."
A man who answered a phone listed for the
Vine Theater, a faded Hollywood movie house, confirmed that the film
had run for a least a day, and possibly longer, several months ago,
arranged by a customer known as "Sam."
Google Inc., which owns
YouTube, pulled down the video Wednesday in Egypt, citing a legal
complaint. It was still accessible in the U.S. and other countries.
Klein
told the AP that he vowed to help make the movie but warned the
filmmaker that "you're going to be the next Theo van Gogh." Van Gogh was
a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a
film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.
"We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen," Klein said.
___Braun reported from Washington.
Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer and Michael Blood in Los Angeles, Tamara Lush in Tampa, Florida, and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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