While the Media has been abuzz with the protests in Egypt,Libya,Yemen,US Ambassador’s Killing,Blocking of sites on trailer of the Film calling The Prophet ‘womanizer,cheat and mad’, the earlier purported Director of The Film Sam Bacile was described as a Jew and was hiding in Israel,it is now known that the Man behind the Film is an Ex convict named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Californian with a conviction for bank fraud.
It was thought the film had been directed by a Sam Bacile. But no trace of him could be found and the trail led to Nakoula, a Coptic Christian — the biggest Christian church in the Middle East and Egypt.
Confronted, he admitted being involved. He got a 21-month jail term for the bank fraud in 2010 and was ordered not to use computers or the Internet.
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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 Mohammed 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, Fla., who burned copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, 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.’
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/13/237766.html
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