‘Anti-Islam Film’ Maker Arrested

27 Sep, 2012

A man linked to an anti-Islam video that sparked riots across the Muslim world is being held in Los Angeles, California, ahead of a bail hearing.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, has been under investigation for violating probation terms after he was released from prison in 2011 for bank fraud. Court records say he was banned from accessing the internet or using an alias without an officer’s permission.

Nakoula has not been detained over the contents of the inflammatory video.

Earlier, the Obama administration had requested Google, the company that owns YouTube, to remove the clip. The technology firm refused, saying the film did not violate its rules.

The US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles confirmed Nakoula had been taken into custody on Thursday.

“Mr Nakoula was arrested pursuant to allegations made by the Probation Office that he has violated the terms of his supervised release,” spokesman Thom Mrozek said. Mr Nakoula, who allegedly produced the 14-minute trailer for the film Innocence of Muslims, was expected to appear in court for a hearing on Thursday afternoon.

He had been in hiding after the release of the video.

First amendment

A clip from the US-made film was dubbed into Arabic, provoking widespread anger for its disrespectful portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.The film was made on a very low budget, with insults and offensive inferences to the Prophet Mohammad and Islam crudely dubbed on afterwards.

But it has not broken any laws in the US, where freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution’s first amendment.The clip was uploaded to YouTube in July, but violence broke out over the video on 11 September.

Four Americans, including US Ambassador Chris Stephens, were killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya earlier this month.

Meanwhile, some of the actors in the video have come forward to say they were misled. They said had been hired to appear in a film called Desert Warriors, which did not mention Islam or the Prophet Muhammad in the script.

BBC

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