LOS ANGELES — A California filmmaker linked to an anti-Islamic movie inflaming protests across the Middle East was interviewed Saturday by federal probation officers at a Los Angeles sheriff’s station, authorities said.
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was interviewed for about half an hour at the station shortly after midnight in his hometown of Cerritos, Calif., said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. After that, deputies dropped Nakoula off at an undisclosed location.
“He is gone. We don’t know where he went,” Whitmore said. “He said he is not going back to his home.”
Federal officials are investigating whether Nakoula, who has been convicted of financial crimes, has violated the terms of his five-year probation. Nakoula, who pleaded no contest to bank fraud charges in 2010, was banned from using computers or the Internet or using false identities as part of his sentence. Whitmore did not disclose other details about the interview.
Federal authorities have identified Nakoula, a self-described Coptic Christian, as the key figure behind “Innocence of Muslims,” a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Middle East. The Associated Press
