Mark Basseley Youssef, aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, filmmaker behind anti-Islam ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ gets 1 year jail time
Mark Basseley Youssef’s house in Cerritos, California. The Egyptian-American is suspected of producing the anti-Islam movie that provoked outrage across the world.
The man behind an anti-Islam YouTube video that sparked massive protests across the Muslim world earlier this year has been given 1 year in prison, the BBC and Associated Press reported.
The AP said that "U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder immediately sentenced Mark Basseley Youssef after he admitted to four of the eight alleged violations, including obtaining a fraudulent California driver's license."
The man has been identified alternatively as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, and has also been referred to by the alias Sam Bacile.
After his 14-minute video, "Innocence of Muslims," gained notoriety for the outrage it provoked, Nakoula was arrested in September over alleged probation violations. Youssef was convicted of bank fraud in 2010, and as part of the conditions for his release from jail, he is banned from accessing the internet or adopting aliases without his probation officer's consent.
He faced up to three years in jail at the time, the Los Angeles Times reported. None of the violations he was accused of had to do directly with the film.
The BBC said in a tweet: