ITB - APNewsBreak: US identifies anti-Muslim filmmaker -- The Seattle Times, AP

[bsteadman]

APNewsBreak: US identifies anti-Muslim filmmaker

The Seattle Times
9/13/2012

Excerpt:

Federal authorities have identified a Coptic Christian in southern California who is on probation after his conviction for financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday.

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and STEPHEN BRAUN

Associated Press

"Federal authorities have identified a Coptic Christian in southern California who is on probation after his conviction for financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The official said authorities had concluded that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was behind "Innocence of Muslims," a film that denigrated Islam and the prophet Muhammad and sparked protests earlier this week in Egypt, Libya and most recently in Yemen. It was not immediately clear whether Nakoula was the target of a criminal investigation or part of the broader investigation into the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya during a terrorist attack.

Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed Thursday that Justice Department officials were investigating the deaths, which occurred during an attack on the American mission in Benghazi.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Nakoula was connected to the persona of Sam Bacile, a man who initially told the AP he was the film's writer and director. But Bacile turned out to be a false identity, and the AP traced a cellphone number Bacile used to a southern California house where it located and interviewed Nakoula.

Bacile initially told AP he was Jewish and Israeli, although Israeli officials said they had no records of such a citizen. Others involved in the film said his statements were contrived, as evidence mounted that the film's key player was a Coptic Christian with a checkered past.

Nakoula told the AP in an interview outside Los Angeles on Wednesday that he managed logistics for the company that produced the film. Nakoula denied he was Bacile and said he did not direct the film, though he said he knew Bacile.

Federal court papers filed against Nakoula in a 2010 criminal prosecution noted that he had used numerous aliases, including Nicola Bacily, Robert Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others.

During a conversation outside his home, Nakoula 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 that middle name as well as other connections to the Bacile persona.

The AP located the man calling himself Bacile after obtaining his cellphone number from Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the U.S. who has promoted the anti-Muslim film in recent days on his website. Egypt's Christian Coptic populace has long decried what they describe as a history of discrimination and occasional violence from the country's Muslim majority.

Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., who sparked outrage in the Arab world when he burned Qurans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, said he spoke with the movie's director on the phone Wednesday and prayed for him. Jones said he has not met the filmmaker in person but added that the man contacted him a few weeks ago about promoting the movie. Jones and others who have dealt with the filmmaker said Wednesday that Bacile was hiding his real identity.

"I have not met him. Sam Bacile, that is not his real name," Jones said. "He is definitely in hiding and does not reveal his identity."

The YouTube account under the username "Sam Bacile" was used to publish excerpts of the provocative movie in July and 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."
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View the complete article at:

http://seattletimes.com/html/enterta...filmmaker.html

[bsteadman]

Is Muhammad Movie a Contrived Fraud?

Infowars
Paul Joseph Watson
9/13/2012

Excerpt:

"An anti-Muslim film that has been blamed for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Egypt, Libya and Yemen is likely a contrived fraud designed to stir up unrest in the Middle East while shielding the true reasons behind the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

A trailer for the film, entitled The Innocence of Muslims, has been on You Tube for over two months. Despite the alleged film maker’s claim that the movie was funded by rich Jewish donors to the tune of $5 million dollars, it has all the quality of a low budget film school project. The trailer has now been banned in several middle eastern countries, including Egypt and Afghanistan.

Indeed, the full film itself may not even exist, a doubt that has also been shared about the existence of its shadowy director Sam Bacile, who told the Associated Press this week that he was a 56-year-old “Israeli Jew” who lives in California, despite telling actors on set that he is Egyptian, while others have claimed he is an American.

Bacile claims he made the film to illustrate how “Islam is a cancer, period.”

However, numerous authorities have failed in attempting to locate a ‘Sam Bacile’ residing in California. Bacile is likely a pseudonym for the only real person who has been positively connected with the movie – Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian living in California who was convicted for federal bank fraud in 2010.

The movie itself – or the 14 minutes of it which have been released – is also highly suspect. Actors involved in filming were told “they were appearing in a film about the life of a generic Egyptian 2,000 years ago.” Following the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, all 80 cast members put out a joint statement stating that they were misled by the producer.

“The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer. We are 100% not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose,” the statement says. “We are shocked by the drastic re-writes of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred.”

The film has been purposely dubbed and edited to elicit maximum outrage from Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad is depicted as a pedophile, a homosexual, a religious phony, a philanderer, a womanizer and a bloodthirsty dictator.

During dialogue, the actors words have been crudely dubbed to include references to Muhammad that were not in the original script.

As Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress involved in the movie, told Gawker, “In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn’t even called Muhammed; he was “Master George.”

“The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed,” writes Adrian Chen.

For example, at 9:03 in the trailer, the words “Is your Muhammed a child molester?” are heard, yet the actress’ voice has been dubbed as her lips do not form the word “Muhammed”.

As the Christian Science Monitor summarizes, the film looks like, “it could have been ginned up by someone sitting a basement with cheap dubbing software.”

Everything about the movie suggests it was a contrived fraud to artificially manufacture unrest in the middle east at a time where speculation that the U.S. and Israel are about to launch military interventions in Iran and Syria is rife.

The amateurish nature of the film may be a ruse to deflect suspicion away from its true purpose and the real identities of its creators.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.infowars.com/is-muhammad-...ntrived-fraud/