• Christian activist says he was deceived over anti-Islam film

    TODAY's Matt Lauer speaks with Al-Arabiya's Washington bureau chief Hisham Melhem on what has made conditions in the Middle East so ripe for violence, and whether there's a deeper anger that feeds the current outrage against the United States.

    WASHINGTON -- An American Coptic Christian activist whose California TV facility was used to make an anti-Islam film that touched off protests across the Muslim world said he was deceived by the film's producer about its inflammatory content. 

    In a statement posted on the blog of a prominent American anti-Islamic activist, Joseph Nassralla, founder of a Duarte, California-based group called Media for Christ, said he was a victim of "disinformation and smear" and the film's principal producer had altered its content without his knowledge. 


    Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

    Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

    Media for Christ operates a Christian satellite TV station called The Way TV, according to its website and tax return. 

    Nassralla said he was contacted last year by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, whom he described as the film's producer, with a plan to make a film about the persecution of Christians in Egypt. 

    Nakoula, who has a criminal record for bank fraud and drug offenses, was briefly questioned last weekend by federal authorities about possible probation violations. He was later released and has gone into hiding. 

    Nassralla said in his statement that in explaining his film project, Nakoula had said the film would be called "Desert Warrior" and would "examine the culture of the desert and how it is related to what is going on right now." 

    The statement was posted on the website Atlasshrugs2000, which is run by Pamela Geller, an activist who has organized anti-Islamic protests and events, including demonstrations opposing construction of an Islamic center near the site of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. 

    Egypt issues arrest warrants for Terry Jones, Coptic Christians over anti-Islam video

    There was no way to independently confirm Nassralla's account. 

    An attorney representing Nakoula in the investigation by probation officials declined to comment on Nassralla's statement, saying he was aware of the blog post but had not had a chance to discuss it with his client. He said Nakoula or his representatives may issue a statement in the future. 

    Actors: 'We were grossly misled'

    Nassralla, who spoke at two rallies in 2010 and 2011 organized by Geller, said Nakoula "needed a place to film. So I let him use my facility." 

    "That is all I did, and is the full extent of my involvement with this project. Nakoula used my facility for ten days. Media for Christ employees were given a vacation during that time, because Nakoula was using the facility and so there was no work for them. There was only one Media for Christ employee who remained, to answer phones for the ministry," Nassralla said. 

    NBC Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel spoke with former Arab League chief and former Egyptian foreign minister, Amr Moussa, to ask why there has been so much anti-American violence despite America's support of Arab Spring.

    Hezbollah chief makes rare appearance, leads calls for protests over video

    There was no sign of activity at the small studios of Media for Christ, located in a nondescript office park behind a Walmart store in suburban Duarte, during two visits last week by a Reuters reporter. 

    On both occasions the doors were found locked and knocks went unanswered. A woman who worked at an office next door said she had not seen any employees there in recent days. 

    Nassralla said he later discovered that Nakoula, using the name "Sam Bacile," had used Media for Christ's name without his permission to obtain an official permit for making the film.

    'We were shocked'
    After accounts of the film began circulating in Egypt and other Muslim majority countries, the amateurish production -- which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer and a fool -- set off a chain of violent protests and attacks on U.S. and other Western embassies in the Middle East and North Africa. 

    In his statement, Nassralla said Nakoula had "filmed his movie not only at my ministry location, but in Nakoula's own home (which reporters located by getting the address from the actors), and in another facility for outside scenes that was included in the permit, Blue Canyon." 

    US analysts: Benghazi emerges as key recruiting ground for al-Qaida

    Nassralla also said that behind his back, Nakoula had "altered the film without anyone's knowledge, changing its entire focus and dubbing in new dialogue. He edited it." 

    "The final product, 'Innocence of Muslims,' bore no resemblance to the film I thought he was making, or the film the actors thought they were creating. We were shocked," Nassralla said. 

    In an introduction to Nassralla's statement, Geller said that she had last seen him at an event in June in California, and that now he was being "hunted like an animal for speaking critically about Islam." 

    Nassralla "is currently in hiding after multiple death threats from Muslims because of his purported role in producing this video," she said. 

    In an exchange of emails with Reuters last weekend, Geller suggested that if Nakoula was arrested, that would represent an attempt to impose strict Islamic Sharia law in the United States. 

    "He will not be in prison for fraud or some probation violation, but for blasphemy. This is Shariah enforcement in America," she said. 

    In a later email, however, Geller expressed disappointment over Nassralla's account of his dealings with Nakoula. But she added, "That would not make (Nakoula) any less a political prisoner." 

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  • Suspected anti-Islam filmmaker questioned by federal probation officers

    An ex-con named Nakoula Bessaly Nakoula was escorted from his Cerritos, Calif., home to answer questions about his role in a controversial anti-Islam film. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

    Updated at 10 a.m. ET: A man purported to be a filmmaker involved with the anti-Islam video sparking violent unrest in the Middle East and North Africa was escorted by deputies from his Cerritos, Calif., home shortly after midnight Saturday morning, NBCLosAngeles.com reported.

    Media and law enforcement had been staking out the home at the end of a cul de sac in the Southern California city for about 48 hours when Nakoula Besseley Nakoula emerged wearing a coat, hat, scarf and glasses.


    L.A. County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore confirmed to NBCLA that Nakoula, 55, was taken to the Cerritos sheriff’s station for interviewing by federal probation officers aimed at determining whether he violated the terms of his 5-year probation by uploading a video to the Internet.

    "We are in an assist mode," he said.

    Whitmore added that Nakoula, who has denied involvement in the film in a phone call to his Coptic Christian bishop, agreed to the interview prior to the deputies arriving at his home, that the move was "entirely voluntary" and the man was "very cooperative."

    Deputies pulled up to the home around midnight, according to witnesses. The group left the home through the side gate because the front door was not working, Whitmore said. NBCLA went to the home earlier this week and saw the front door was missing a knob.

    International protesters have cited the 15-minute video posted on the Internet called "The Innocence of Muslims" as a catalyst for their demonstrations in countries such as Libya, Tunisia and Egypt.

    Read more on NBCLosAngeles.com

    They say the piece is insulting to their religion as it depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a child molester and a thug. In Islam, all images of Muhammad are prohibited, let alone negative ones.

    Nakoula has told the Associated Press he was not the director on the film, but rather a logistics manager. The film's mystery producer has been said to go by the pseudonym Sam Bacile.

    A telephone number said to belong to Bacile, given to Reuters by U.S.-based Coptic Christian activist Morris Sadek who said he had promoted the film, was later traced back to a person who shares the Nakoula residence. 

    NBC's Mike Taibbi has more on three men suspected of producing an anti-Islam film that is sparking outrage around the globe.

    Nakoula reportedly requested deputies step up patrols around his home Wednesday after media descended on the area. At the time, Whitmore told reporters there had been no disturbance or crime.

    Related: At least 7 reported killed in protests over anti-Islamic video
    Related: Two US troops killed at Afghan camp where Prince Harry is based

    Early reports suggested the film prompted the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that killed 14 people, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, two former Navy SEALS who were providing security for Stevens, and information management officer Sean Smith.

    But U.S. officials are also probing the possibility that Wednesday’s attack was planned and timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

    A federal grand jury indictment in February 2009 charged Nakoula in an alleged bank fraud conspiracy. The indictment accused him and others of fraudulently obtaining the identities and Social Security numbers of bank customers at Wells Fargo and withdrawing $860 from bank branches in Cerritos, Artesia and Norwalk.

    Nakoula pleaded no contest in 2010 and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison, but was released early. The terms of his parole included being barred from assuming aliases and using computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer. 

    Many records in the case remain sealed, but prosecutors sought a longer prison term and noted that he misused some of his own relatives' identities to open 600 fraudulent credit accounts.

    Los Angeles County District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons confirmed that Nakoula also served a year in jail after pleading guilty to possession of meth with the intent to manufacture in 1997.

    U.S. officials have said authorities were not investigating the film project itself, and that even if it was inflammatory or led to violence, simply producing it cannot be considered a crime in the United States, which has strong free speech laws. 

    It could be difficult to establish a probation violation case against Nakoula. In the federal court system, the conditions of supervised release are geared toward the offense for which a defendant was found guilty and imprisoned.

    In Nakoula's case, the offense was bank fraud. His no contest plea was to charges of setting up fraudulent bank accounts using stolen identities and Social Security numbers, depositing checks from those accounts into other phony accounts and then withdrawing the illicit funds from ATM machines.

    While it was unclear what might have provoked authorities' interest, the filmmaker's use of a false identity and his access to the Internet through computers could be at issue, according to experts in cyber law and the federal probation system. Nakoula, who told the AP that he was logistics manager for the film, was under requirements to provide authorities with records of all his bank and business accounts. 

    There are indications that "Innocence of Muslims" may have already been under way as a film project when Nakoula was arrested. A casting call for actors and crew for a film called "Desert Warrior" ran in Backstage magazine, based in Los Angeles and New York, in May and June 2009. The casting call described the film project as a "historical Arabian Desert adventure" and listed a "Sam Bassiel" as producer.

    One notice identified "Pharaoh Voice Inc."as the film's production company. California state records show Pharaoh Voice was incorporated in September 2007 by a "Youssef M. Basseley." The principal address for Pharaoh Voice in Hawaiian Gardens, a southern California community, is the same location where Nakoula lived until 2008, according to state records.

    Nakoula Besseley Nakoula, suspected of producing a recent anti-Islam film, is taken in for questioning in Cerritos, Calif. MSNBC's Alex Witt and MSNBC contributor Ret. Col. Jack Jacobs discuss.

    During an interview with AP, Nakoula denied that he was Sam Bacile, but acknowledged knowing him. 

    Stan Goldman, a Loyola Law School professor, said whether Nakoula is sent back to jail over potential probation violations linked to the film, such as accessing the Internet, was a subjective decision up to an individual judge.

    "Federal judges are gods in their own courtrooms, it varies so much in who they are," he said, noting such a move would be based on his conduct not on the content of the film. 

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Why films and cartoons of Muhammad spark violence

    Abedin Taherkenareh / EPA

    Iranian women shout anti-U.S. slogans in front of the Swiss embassy, which houses the U.S. interest section, in Tehran on Thursday. Reports from the Iranian capital said about 500 joined the protest of the Internet-circulated movie "Innocence of Muslims."

    While the motivation behind the low-budget video "Innocence of Muslims" remains unclear, the reasons it has helped fuel attacks and protests at U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East and Africa are both emotional and political, experts say.

    While it is true that images of Muhammad are not allowed in Islamic tradition, that doesn't explain the violent reaction, said Hassan Shibly, an imam and civil rights lawyer in Florida who works for the Council on American Islamic Relations.


    The reason for the prohibition in the Quran was that Muhammad wanted to discourage idolatry, he explained.

    "The Islamic tradition forbade depictions of any prophet or any holy people so that people throughout the years don’t start worshipping the prophet," Shibly said. "God is supposed to be the focus, not Muhammad or Jesus or anyone else."

    Images of God, whom Muslims call Allah, also are not allowed because Muhammad believed that no picture could capture the creator, Shibly said. This is why the walls of mosques are typically decorated with abstract art and calligraphy.

    The film, which has been blamed for fueling protests at U.S. diplomatic posts, including the violence at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, and Danish cartoons that caused so much protest in 2005 caused outrage among Muslims because they were seen as ridiculing or criticizing the prophet.

    Actors and the assistant director of the film "Innocence of Muslims" told NBC News that the original spoken lines in the screenplay were dubbed over without their knowledge. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

    "For Muslims, Muhammad is a sacred symbol," said John Esposito, a professor at Georgetown University. "Muhammad represents and embodies the religion of Islam. He’s not a god, but plays the role historically that Jesus played historically."

    Images like these are now making their way, via the Internet to Muslim populations who have never before been exposed to sharp critiques of their faith, which also helps explain the level of anger they have stirred.

    Esposito said the reaction resembles those in the West earlier in history.

    He pointed to the uproar over 1988 Hollywood film "The Last Temptation of Christ." Director Martin Scorsese's adaptation of a book by the same name showed Jesus struggling with lust, depression and doubt, and  engaging in sex — in his imaginings — before snapping back to reality and dying on the cross. That movie was seen as blasphemy by some Christians, who — though not violent — were vocal enough to prevent the film from being shown in many parts of the United States.

    Shibly stressed that there is no justification for the violence that took the lives of the four Americans in Libya, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, on Tuesday. CAIR on Wednesday issued a call for Muslims to ignore what it called the "trashy" anti-Islam film and has condemned the killings.

    "It’s so hypocritical for (the attackers) to do these acts in the name of the prophet Muhammad,” said Shibly. "Muhammad didn’t win over his enemies by violence, he did so through compassion."

    However, he says that insults to Muhammad hurt deeply.

    "Muslims love the prophets of god more than we love our own parents, more than we love ourselves," said Shibly. "When people attack Muhammad, it definitely hurts us on an emotion level. But, that said, it doesn’t justify the violence. That’s just totally unacceptable."

    "Innocence of Muslims" features wooden acting, poor dubbing, awkward sexual moments and ham-fisted insults, with none of the production values of "The Last Temptation of Christ," or any serious exploration of Islam. Experts said it would almost certainly have remained obscure had it not ignited the protests and violence after being circulated in Arabic via the Internet.

    So far, it remains unclear who produced the film, and who funded it. Initially, the maker was identified as an Israeli-American man identified as Sam Bacile. But by Thursday, published reports were suggesting that it was the work of a group of anti-Islam Christians.

    The latest reporting suggests that  Bacile is actually Egyptian-born Coptic Christian named Nakoula Basseley who lives in the Los Angeles area. The Copts are a minority in Egypt, and often victims of discrimination in the majority Muslim country, as well as attacks by extremists.

    In a geopolitical context, said Esposito, the film plays right into the hands of extremists in the region who are using anti-American sentiment to advance their own goals.

    "What we have here, and it’s significant symbolically ... on or around 9/11 (anniversary), two terrorist or extremist attacks in Benghazi and in Cairo. … They are attacking symbols of the U.S. They are playing to a population. … It would be anti-American, but (they are) using this (video) to legitimize what they are doing."

    Shibly also wonders if the film itself was produced or circulated strategically to stir up well-known sensitivities.

    "The sad thing is these people are doing it on purpose," he said. "And unfortunately these Muslims fell right into the trap."

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  • Man behind anti-Islam film reportedly is Egyptian-born ex-con

    Updated 1:36 a.m. ET: A 55-year-old Egypt-born Coptic Christian man living in the Los Angeles area was a key figure behind the anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims," blamed for sparking riots and protests in the Middle East, a federal law enforcement official told NBC News Thursday.

    Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who is on probation after being convicted of financial crimes, also was twice sentenced to jail on drug charges in the late 1990s, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office said.

    Court records show that Nakoula was convicted on federal fraud charges in Los Angeles in 2010. Among the conditions of his probation, Nakoula was barred from using "any online service at any location" without the prior approval of his probation officer, according to a copy of court records in the case.

    Actors and the assistant director of the film "Innocence of Muslims" told NBC News that the original spoken lines in the screenplay were dubbed over without their knowledge. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

     


    Federal law enforcement officials are investigating whether Nakoula violated his probation on those fraud charges in his efforts to promote the movie, an official has confirmed to NBC News. 

    The official emphasized that the current probe of Nakoula relates only to whether he violated his probation order — not into the content of the inflammatory movie.

    "This is not an investigation of the film," the official said, or in any way intended to infringe on his "First Amendment rights." 

    It was not immediately clear whether Nakoula was the target of a criminal investigation or part of the broader U.S. investigation into the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya during an attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

    The crude and provocative anti-Islam video, blamed in part for sparking protests against U.S. diplomatic missions, was promoted by another Egyptian-born Coptic Christian named Morris Sadek on his website.

    Copts make up a minority in Egypt where they have been victims of discrimination and sometimes attacks by Islamic extremists.

    A trailer for the amateurish film, posted on YouTube in July and later reposted after being translated into Arabic, portrays Muhammad, the most important prophet in Islam, variously as a womanizer, a homosexual and a child abuser.

    The translated clip, shown repeatedly on Egyptian television stations in recent weeks, was blamed for sparking protests across the Middle East and North Africa and was blamed for inciting an attacks on American diplomatic missions in several Middle Eastern cities.

    U.S. officials are also investigating the possibility that the deadly Libya attack was planned in advance to coincide with the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by Islamist terrorists.

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    NBC's Kerry Sanders talks about the controversial pastor's history of provocative acts against Islam and how he may be tied to an inflammatory film that has sparked uproar within the global Muslim community.

    The mysterious origins of the film were the subject of intense reporting.

    The Associated Press was first to report that it had reached the filmmaker who said he was an Israeli-American real estate developer from California who had made the movie by raising $5 million from wealthy Jewish donors. It gradually emerged that the man, who went by "Sam Bacile," was using an alias. The film, tied to U.S.-based Christians with extreme anti-Islam views, was produced on a low budget in southern California using actors who were apparently unaware of the film’s ultimate purpose.

    Some of the information leading to Nakoula came from Morris Sadek, who is also an Egyptian-born American who had promoted the film on his website. Reporting in The Atlantic also connected the film to Steve Klein, a self-described militant Christian activist in Riverside, Calif., Klein indicated that the film maker contacted him as a consultant because Klein leads anti-Islam protests outside mosques and schools.

    The 13-minute English-language trailer for the film was posted on YouTube in July by an account registered to a Sam Bacile. It shows the cast performing a wooden dialogue, with insults cast as revelations about Muhammad dubbed over the top.

    The Quran forbids any depiction of Muhammad, and most Muslims regard any attempt to insult him as highly offensive. A Danish newspaper's 2005 publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet triggered riots in many Muslim countries.

    Why films and cartoons of Muhammad spark violence

    Actors: 'We were grossly misled'
    Cindy Lee Garcia, of Bakersfield, California, who appears briefly in clips of the film posted online, said she answered a casting call last year to appear in a movie titled "Desert Warrior."

    TODAY's Matt Lauer speaks with security analyst Michael Leiter about the likelihood that the attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya was a pre-meditated act by a group of al-Qaida sympathizers rather than a spontaneous uprising over an anti-Muslim Internet video.

    "It looks so unreal to me, it's like nothing that we even filmed was there. There was all this weird stuff there," Garcia told Reuters in a phone interview. 

    Garcia said the film was shot in the summer of 2011 inside a church near Los Angeles, with actors standing in front of a "green screen," which allows background images to be added in post-production. About 50 actors were involved, she said. 

    Libya pledges to help US catch American officials' killers

    An expired casting notice at Backstage.com listed a film named "Desert Warrior" that it described as a low-budget "historical Arabian Desert adventure film." None of the characters were identified in the casting call as Muhammad. 

    "They told me it was based on what it was like 2,000 years ago at the time of the Lord," Garcia said. "Like the time Christ was here."

    A source close to the cast and crew of the film told NBC News that "Bacile" misled the actors and production crew.

    "The entire crew and cast are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," the source said. "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."

     

    Zoubeir Souissi / Reuters

    The U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed after protesters angry over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad stormed the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, as protests spread across the region.

     

    Nakoula's criminal background is the subject of mounting scrutiny in the wake of reports linking him to the anti-Islam movie.

    In the late 1990s he was convicted on intent to manufacture methamphetamine, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office confirmed.

    After his conviction, Nakoula was sentenced to one year in jail — and then resentenced for another one year term in April 2002 after violating his probation. That was seven years before Nakoula was arrested again on federal bank fraud charges involving alleged identity theft. After pleading no contest, he was convicted in federal court in June 2010,  sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $794,700 in restitution.

    Court records show that in the federal identify theft case against him, Nakoula used multiple aliases, including "Youseff M. Basseley" and "Niolca Bacily," to commit bank fraud.

    Nakoula told the AP he was a Coptic Christian. Although denying he was "Bacile," Nakoula was quoted as saying the film's director supporting the concerns of Christian Coptics.

    Meanwhile, a film industry spokesman confirmed that a Duarte, California-based evangelical Christian group called "Media for Christ" received a one day permit last year to make the film, a Los Angeles film official confirms to NBC News.

    Media for Christ runs an Arabic language satellite TV station called "Way TV," according to the group's tax returns.

    "The Way TV provides its audience with prayers, sermons, and hymns 24/7 to prepare them for Christ's happy and long awaited second coming," the tax returns state.

    Media for Christ applied for and received the permit to make the film in Aug. 2011, listing the title then as "Desert Warriors," said a spokesman for Film LA, a non-profit that coordinates the awarding for film permits under contracts with the city and county of Los Angeles.

    The listed producer on the film was "Sam Bossil," but LA Film has no other information about him, the spokesman said. A woman who answered the phone at Media for Christ Thursday hung up the phone Thursday.

    Police patrolled the cul-de-sac in suburban Cerritos, Calif., where Nakoula is believed to live, NBCLosAngeles.com reported. Officers said the resident of the home asked for security after media descended on the two-story home.

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Questions swirl around anti-Islam film blamed for Egypt protest, attack in Libya

    Questions swirled Wednesday around the makers of a provocative anti-Islam movie blamed by some for triggering protests at U.S. diplomatic outposts in Egypt and Libya and sparking an attack on the latter that claimed the life of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

    At least one clip from what is described as a feature film titled “Innocence of Muslims” was posted on YouTube and later reposted after being translated into Arabic. The clip, an amateurish production featuring dozens of actors, portrays Muhammad, believed by Muslims to be God’s prophet, as a womanizer, a homosexual and a child abuser.

    Reports published by The Associated Press and the Wall Street Journalidentified the filmmaker as Sam Bacile. The AP described Bacile as a 56-year-old Israeli American real estate developer from California; the Journal said he was a 52-year-old real estate developer, but did not say where he lived. Both news organizations said that they interviewed Bacile, who was said to be in hiding, by phone, and both quoted him as saying the film was intended to show that "Islam is a cancer."


    "This is a political movie," the AP quoted him as saying. "The U.S. lost a lot of money and a lot of people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're fighting with ideas."


    Follow Mike Brunker on Twitter and Facebook.


    But by midday Wednesday, Bacile's credibility -- indeed his very existence -- were being questioned:

    • The Atlantic quoted a man reported by the AP to be a consultant on the film, Steve Klein, as saying that “Bacile” is a pseudonym and that the filmmaker “is not Israeli and most likely not Jewish.”

    Klein, a self-described militant Christian activist in Riverside, Calif., told the Atlantic  he doesn’t know the man’s real name and indicated that the filmmaker contacted him because he leads anti-Islam protests outside mosques and schools.

    • A source close to the cast and crew of the film told NBC News that the man known as Bacile misled the actors and production crew. 

    "The entire crew and cast are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," the source said. "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."

    • Israeli officials also told the AP that there is no record of an Israeli citizen named Sam Bacile.
    • California corporate records show no one by that name as holding a real estate license there.

    The 13-minute, English-language trailer was posted on YouTube in July by an account registered to Sam Bacile. The account, which was created in April, lists Bacile's age as 75 and has been used only twice apart from posting the trailer -- once to "like" another video and to make one comment, in Arabic. That comment, which referenced a debate on Egyptian TV over the "Innocence of Muslims" clip, was translated as, "Oh, Animal, it’s 100% an American movie."

    The trailer shows an amateur cast performing a wooden dialogue of insults cast as revelations about Muhammad. 

    Many Muslims find it offensive to depict Muhammad in any manner, let alone insult the prophet. A Danish newspaper's 2005 publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet triggered riots in many Muslim countries.

    The Journal reported the film had been promoted by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose burning of Qurans previously sparked deadly riots in Pakistan and other Muslim nations.

    Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., told NBC News on Wednesday that he aired the trailer once in his makeshift church. But he said efforts to screen it on Tuesday, the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were thwarted by technical difficulties.

    NBC's Kerry Sanders talks about the controversial pastor's history of provocative acts against Islam and how he may be tied to an inflammatory film that has sparked uproar within the global Muslim community.

    "We tried to stream it … and every time we did that, it was cut off, disappeared,” he said.

    A statement on the pastor’s political website, posted late Tuesday, said that the screening was to have been part of a day-long ‘International Judge Muhammad Day’ in which the Muslim prophet would be subjected to a mock trial for “promoting murder, rape, and destruction of people and property through his writings called the Koran.”

    Jones also told NBC’s Kerry Sanders that he had been in contact with the movie’s producer, but did not provide financial support for its production or distribution.

    The AP also reported that Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian in the United States known for his anti-Islam views, said he was promoting the video on his website and on certain TV stations, which he did not identify.

    Although it was posted to YouTube in July, the film only attracted attention in the Middle East after an unknown person recently dubbed it into Egyptian Arabic. That translation, which the man who identified himself as Bacile told the AP was accurate, has been broadcast repeatedly on Egyptian media in recent weeks after being seized upon by extreme Islamists who dislike the presence of the country’s Coptic Christians.

    NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports on the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. The envoy is the first American ambassador killed on duty since 1979.

    Film news site The Wrap said the Arabic-dubbed version had garnered more than 40,000 views by Tuesday afternoon. However, that clip appeared to have been taken down on Wednesday.

    The AP quoted the man who identified himself as Bacile as saying that the film was made in the summer of 2011, with 59 actors and about 45 people behind the camera. The Journal quoted him as saying that the film cost $5 million, which was raised from about 100 Jewish donors, whom he declined to identify.

    The man also told the AP that the full film, which he said is three hours in length, was shown only once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this year.  

    No record of such a screening could be found.

    NBC News' Alfred Arian, Kerry Sanders and Bob Sullivan and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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