Maker of Anti-Islam Film Gets Year in Prison
An Egyptian Christian man who is one of the key figures behind an anti-Islam film that sparked violence in the Middle East and throughout the world was sentenced to prison.
Mark Basseley Youssef, also known as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, who reportedly wrote and produced “Innocence of Muslims,” was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to a year in federal prison for probation violations.
Youssef was arrested Sept. 27 in Los Angeles for violating his probation in a 2010 check-kiting case. He was charged with eight probation violations, including lying to police when he was detained for questioning. He was ordered held without bail after being called a flight risk.
Youssef told the court that he used several fake names and obtained a driver’s license under a false name, according to Reuters.
The sentence has nothing to do with his involvement in the controversial film and its aftermath, the court stressed, though the violations came to law enforcement’s attention due to the controversy surrounding the film.
Youssef is believed to have uploaded a 14-minute movie trailer, translated into Arabic, to YouTube, despite not being allowed to use the Internet without permission from his probation officer.
The trailer for the crudely produced film ridiculing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad caused an outbreak of violence at U.S. diplomatic posts in the Middle East and throughout the world. Four American diplomats died in the violence.
In the wake of the initial violence, two media outlets interviewed a California man who gave his name as Sam Bacile and reportedly said he had produced, directed and written “Innocence of Muslims.” But his claims, which included that he was an Israeli American in the real estate business, quickly came under scrutiny and were found to be untrue. It was later revealed that Bacile was Youssef.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
