'Innocence of Muslims' Creator Revealed? Anti-Islam Film Spurs Outrage in Middle East
There are new reports surfacing about the real identity of the person responsible for creating the controversial film "Innocence of Muslims." It led to several U.S. embassies to being attacked and four Americans, including Chris Stevens, ambassador to Libya, being killed.
Federal authorities, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have stated that the person behind the film is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, who has had previous encounters with law enforcement, according to the Associated Press.
Reports indicate that Nakoula handled logistics for the film and that he knew Sam Bacile. However, reports indicate that there is a very close similarity between Nakoula and the supposed identity of Sam Bacile, which is thought to be a pseudonym.
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The film depicts the prophet Mohammad as a womanizing goon whose followers are mindless thugs. It also shows the prophet in compromising sexual positions and offers insults to Islam as punch lines.
Those depictions, coupled with the fact that Muslims find it extremely offensive to depict the prophet in any form, ignited an already flammable base of Islamic extremists.
The creator of the film is reportedly already in hiding and anticipated the backlash that his film would cause. The California-based filmmaker, during a phone call from an undisclosed location, told reporters that Islam is a cancer and that its flawed principals need to be exposed.
The film caused a mob estimated to have several hundred demonstrators to assemble in front of the American embassy in Cairo, and they were able to breach the security line by scaling the outer wall.
The attackers then flew a black flag that has been known to represent groups with associations to al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
The Embassy in Libya was also attacked when a group, containing about two dozen people, opened fire and stormed the embassy with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. During the attack the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed along with three other Americans whose identities have not been released pending notification of their families.
The third attack on a U.S. embassy occurred on Thursday in Sanaa, Yemen. There were no reports of gunfire or additional deaths, but protesters were able to scale the outer walls of the embassy complex, remove the American flag and raise a black flag representative of al-Qaeda before Yemeni officials were able to disperse the crowd.
