Latest developments in protest of anti-Islam film

Associated Press/Khalil Hamra - An Egyptian protester throws a gas canister away during clashes near the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012. Protesters clashed with police near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for the third day in a row. Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi vowed to protect foreign embassies in Cairo, where police were using tear gas to disperse protesters at the U.S. mission. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Palestinians protest against the movie, "Innocence of Muslims," near the United Nations office in Gaza City, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012. Muslim anger over perceived Western insults to Islam has exploded several times, most recently in Tuesday's attacks against U.S. diplomatic posts in the Middle East in which U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed. The banner reads in Arabic "you are more dear than my father and mother my beloved prophet Mohammed." (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Here's a look at protests across the Middle East on Thursday, three days after crowds angry over an anti-Muslim film began assaulting a string of U.S. embassies in the region.

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YEMEN

Hundreds of protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in the capital Sanaa, chanting "death to America," setting tires ablaze, smashing windows and pelting the compound with rocks. They brought down the U.S. flag in the courtyard, burned it and replaced it with a black Islamic banner.

Yemeni security forces rushed to the scene, fired in the air and used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. They were able to drive them out of the compound after about 45 minutes, sealing off the surrounding streets. Yemen's president apologized to President Barack Obama for the attack that he said was aimed to derail Yemen's close relations with Washington.

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EGYPT

Protesters clashed with police near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for the third day in a row. Police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators and the two sides pelted each other with rocks. Sixteen protesters and 13 policemen were wounded in the clashes, which broke out overnight. Twelve protesters have been arrested, the Interior Ministry said.

Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi vowed during a visit to Brussels not to allow attacks on foreign embassies in Cairo, saying the Egyptian people reject such "unlawful acts."

The ruling Muslim Brotherhood called for demonstrations after Friday prayers to protest against the movie that ridicules Prophet Muhammad.

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IRAQ

Hundreds of followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded the closure of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — the largest American diplomatic mission in the world — because of the film. Thousands marched in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in northeast Baghdad and shouted, "No, no, to Israel! No, no to America!" and "Yes, yes for Messenger of God."

An Iran-backed Shiite militant group threatened U.S. interests in Iraq with its militia's leader, Qais al-Khazali, telling the AP that the amateurish movie was unforgiveable. He called on all Muslims to "face our joint enemy." An estimated 15,000 employees work at the U.S. embassy.

Large protests were expected in Baghdad and Iraq's second largest city, Basra, after Friday prayers.

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AFGHANISTAN

The government in Kabul has sought to avert protests, given that anger over perceived insults to Islam has triggered violence in the past. President Hamid Karzai canceled an official visit to Norwayand spoke by phone with Obama to convey his condolences for the deaths of the U.S. ambassador toLibya and three other diplomats. He also discussed the "film and the insulting of holy Islamic values."

A Shiite cleric condemned the film during a sermon in a mosque west of Kabul. Sayyed Eisa Hossaini Mazari told about 200 worshippers in a mosque west of Kabul that a "dirty American made a movie and it was put on YouTube." Mazari did not directly call for demonstrations in Afghanistan, but told the AP there will be protests if there is no "U.S. action against the movie."

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IRAN

About 50 protesters gathered in Tehran outside the Swiss Embassy, which looks after U.S. diplomatic interests, shouting "Death to America" and condemning the film. The embassy is heavily guarded by riot police and there were no reports of violence.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the United States to punish those who were involved in making and financing the film, calling it "a grave and unforgivable sin" and a "dirty crime."

Authorities have called for protests after Friday prayers.

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GAZA

About 150 Muslim clerics and lawmakers from the ruling Hamas movement stage a protest outside the parliament building in Gaza City to condemn the film. They accused Israel and the West of stoking up sectarian tensions in the region and pitching Muslims against Christians.

Hamas and the smaller militant group Islamic Jihad are calling for large protests across Gaza on Friday.

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ISRAEL

Israeli police said they were stepping up security ahead of Friday prayers in Jerusalem. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that "tensions have been felt." He said a larger number of officers would be deployed around Jerusalem's Old City, where the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, is located.

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JORDAN

Calls by several Muslim opposition groups for protests at the U.S. Embassy in the capital Amman went ignored. A banned extremist Islamic movement with links to al-Qaida called on its followers to attend a demonstration outside the American embassy compound after Friday prayers.

Anti-Muslim film promoter outspoken on Islam

Associated Press/Gillian Flaccus - In this frame grab from a video made on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, Steve Klein, an insurance agent and Christian activist involved in "Innocence of Muslims," a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Middle East, speaks during an interview at his office in Hemet, Calif. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

A protester throws stones at the police during a demonstration, condemning a U.S.-made film which they say insults the Prophet Mohammad, near the U.S. embassy in Cairo, September 14, 2012. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih (EGYPT - Tags: RELIGION CIVIL UNREST)

HEMET, Calif. (AP) — The public face for the anti-Muslim film inflaming the Middle East is not the filmmaker, but an insurance agent and Vietnam War veteran whose unabashed and outspoken hatred of radical Muslims has drawn the attention of civil libertarians, who say he's a hate monger.

With the Coptic Christian filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in hiding, film promoter Steve Klein has taken center stage in the unfolding international drama. He's given a stream of interviews about the film and the man he says he knew only as Sam Bacile, and is using the attention to talk about his own political views.

Nakoula, who used Bacile spelled multiple ways as a pseudonym, contacted Klein months ago for advice about the limits of American free speech and asked for help vetting the movie's script, Klein said in an interview with The Associated Press. The filmmaker asked the 61-year-old grandfather if he would act as a spokesman if the film "caught on," and he agreed.

The role dovetailed with Klein's relentless pursuit of radical Muslims in America, an activity he says he began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It took on more meaning in 2007, when his son, then a 27-year-old Army staff sergeant, was seriously injured in Iraq. Matthew Klein, a medic, was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor and a Purple Heart for injuries he suffered in the attack by a suicide bomber, according to the Army Human Resources Command.

"What do I get out of this? I get to die one of these days hoping my granddaughters and my grandsons will be safe from these monsters," Klein said while sipping a beer on the front porch of his home.

He claimed to have visited "every mosque in California" and identified "500 to 750 of these people who are future suicide bombers and murderers."

"Those are the guys I'm looking for. I'm not interested in mom and pop running a pizza store or running a smoky shop, a hookah shop," he said.

Klein works with his wife as an insurance agent out of a small office on the second floor of a downtrodden business complex in Hemet, a small city in the shadows of the San Jacinto Mountains about 90 miles southeast of Los Angeles. He describes himself as a failed real estate investor who lost 20 properties in the recession. In 2002, he was the American Independent Party's candidate for state insurance commissioner, receiving 2 percent of the vote.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says they have been tracking Klein for several years and have labeled two of the organizations he is affiliated with as hate groups.

Klein founded Courageous Christians United, which conducts protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques, and started Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment, which preaches against Muslims and publishes volumes of anti-Muslim propaganda that Klein distributes. He also has helped train paramilitary militias at the church of Kaweah near Three Rivers, about an hour southeast of Fresno, to prepare for what they believe is a coming holy war with Muslim sleeper cells, according to the law center.

"It's extreme, ugly, violent rhetoric and the fact that he's involved in that weapons training at that church, when you combine things like weapons training with hatred of a people, that's very concerning to us. Those are the kind of things that lead to hate crimes," said Heidi Beirich, director of the center's Intelligence Project.

Beirich said her group has not linked Klein to any violence. A review of California court records shows only two minor traffic cases for Klein.

Klein is not affiliated with the church of Kaweah, Pastor Warren Mark Campbell said. He was invited to speak about Islam and hasn't been back in more than a year.

Klein dismissed the concerns of his critics, angrily calling them "the wife-beaters and the pedophiles."

"Those people are screwballs. End of comment," he said.

What Klein has been eager to discuss in the days since his name became publicly linked to Nakoula is his role in the film's creation and his own political views.

Klein said he recognized parallels between what he saw in Vietnam, where he says he infiltrated Viet Cong cells, and "Muslim sleeper cells" he began finding after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He visits mosques and confronts young Muslim men who "dress up like Osama bin Laden and Yasser Arafat."

Military records obtained by the AP from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis show he served in the Marine Corps from 1968 to 1977 on active duty and received a service star for participating in the campaign in Vietnam. He also received a good conduct medal and a combat action medal before retiring in 1980 with the rank of first lieutenant.

"I'm kind of an unsophisticated James Bond operative. I want to piss this guy off, I want to find out, Why does he want to kill me?" he said. "Why does he want to capture my daughter and granddaughter and rape them? Why does this guy want to act this way?"

That work indirectly led him to his affiliation with Nakoula, an Egyptian Christian living outside Los Angeles, who contacted him about making an anti-Muslim movie.

Klein reviewed the script and then the man disappeared, only to resurface months later with a complete film ready to show at a movie theater in Hollywood.

The filmmaker's idea was to give the film a title that would draw in "hardcore Muslims" and then trick them into watching a movie that bashed Islam in the hopes that they would give up their faith, Klein said.

Nakoula papered Southern California mosques with flyers about the "Innocence of Muslims," but not one ticket was sold, said Klein, who said Nakoula was crushed.

The AP has tried without success to find a copy of the entire film.

Later, a 14-minute trailer showed up on YouTube and has been blamed for inflaming mobs that attacked U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya this week as well as U.S. Embassy in Yemen on Thursday. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was one of four Americans killed Tuesday in an attack in Libya.

Klein said he had no regrets about participating in the movie's creation.

"Do I have blood on my hands? No. Did I kill this guy? No," he said. "Do I feel guilty that these people were incited? Guess what? I didn't incite them. They're pre-incited, they're pre-programmed to do this."

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Associated Press Writers Rachel Zoll and Randy Herschaft and Associated Press Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York; Tracie Cone in Three Rivers, Calif., and Amy Taxin in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

US law enforcement: Nakoula is filmmaker of anti-Muslim movie blamed for violence

WASHINGTON - Federal authorities have identified a Coptic Christian in southern California who is on probation after his conviction for financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

The official said Thursday that authorities had concluded that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was behind "Innocence of Muslims," a film that denigrated Islam and the prophet Muhammad and sparked protests earlier this week in Egypt, Libya and most recently in Yemen. It was not immediately clear whether Nakoula was the target of a criminal investigation or part of the broader investigation into the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya during a terrorist attack.

Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed Thursday that Justice Department officials were investigating the deaths, which occurred during an attack on the American mission in Benghazi.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Nakoula was connected to the persona of Sam Bacile, a man who initially told the AP he was the film's writer and director. But Bacile turned out to be a false identity, and the AP traced a cellphone number Bacile used to a southern California house where it located and interviewed Nakoula.

Bacile initially told AP he was Jewish and Israeli, although Israeli officials said they had no records of such a citizen. Others involved in the film said his statements were contrived, as evidence mounted that the film's key player was a Coptic Christian with a checkered past.

Nakoula told the AP in an interview outside Los Angeles on Wednesday that he managed logistics for the company that produced the film. Nakoula denied he was Bacile and said he did not direct the film, though he said he knew Bacile.

Federal court papers filed against Nakoula in a 2010 criminal prosecution noted that he had used numerous aliases, including Nicola Bacily, Robert Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others.

During a conversation outside his home, Nakoula 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 that middle name as well as other connections to the Bacile persona.

The AP located the man calling himself Bacile after obtaining his cellphone number from Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the U.S. who has promoted the anti-Muslim film in recent days on his website. Egypt's Christian Coptic populace has long decried what they describe as a history of discrimination and occasional violence from the country's Muslim majority.

Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., who sparked outrage in the Arab world when he burned Qurans on the ninth anniversary of 9-11, said he spoke with the movie's director on the phone Wednesday and prayed for him. Jones said he has not met the filmmaker in person but added that the man contacted him a few weeks ago about promoting the movie. Jones and others who have dealt with the filmmaker said Wednesday that Bacile was hiding his real identity.

"I have not met him. Sam Bacile, that is not his real name," Jones said. "He is definitely in hiding and does not reveal his identity."

The YouTube account under the username "Sam Bacile" was used to publish excerpts of the provocative movie in July and was used to post comments online as recently as Tuesday, including this defence of the film written in Arabic: "It is a 100 per cent American movie, you cows."

Nakoula, who talked guardedly with AP about his role, pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and was ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Leigh Williams said Nakoula set up fraudulent bank accounts using stolen identities and Social Security numbers; then, checks from those accounts would be deposited into other bogus accounts from which Nakoula would withdraw money at ATM machines.

It was "basically a check-kiting scheme," the prosecutor told the AP. "You try to get the money out of the bank before the bank realizes they are drawn from a fraudulent account. There basically is no money."

Prior to his bank fraud conviction, Nakoula struggled with a series of financial problems in recent years, according to California state tax and bankruptcy records. In June 2006, a $191,000 tax lien was filed against him in the Los Angeles County Recorder of Deeds office. In 1997, a $106,000 lien was filed against him in Orange County.

American actors and actresses who appeared in "Innocence of Muslims" issued a joint statement Wednesday saying they were misled about the project and alleged that some of their dialogue was crudely dubbed during post-production.

In the English-language version of the trailer, direct references to Muhammad appear to be the result of post-production changes to the movie. Either actors aren't seen when the name "Muhammad" is spoken in the overdubbed sound, or they appear to be mouthing something else as the name of the prophet is spoken.

"The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," said the statement, obtained by the Los Angeles Times. "We are 100 per cent 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."

One of the actresses, Cindy Lee Garcia, told KERO-TV in Bakersfield that the film was originally titled "Desert Warriors" and the script did not contain offensive references to Islam.

"When I found out this movie had caused all this havoc, I called Sam and asked him why, what happened, why did he do this? I said, 'Why did you do this to us, to me and to us?' And he said, 'Tell the world that it wasn't you that did it, it was me, the one who wrote the script, because I'm tired of the radical Muslims running around killing everyone,'" she said.

Garcia said the director, who called himself Sam Bacile, told her then that he was Egyptian.

The man identifying himself as Bacile told the AP he was an Israeli-born, 56-year-old Jewish writer and director. But a Christian activist involved in the film project, Steve Klein, told the AP on Wednesday that Bacile was a pseudonym and that the man was Christian. Klein had told the AP on Tuesday that the filmmaker was an Israeli Jew who was concerned for family members who live in Egypt.

About 15 key players from the Middle East — people from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, and a couple of Coptic Christians from Egypt — worked on the film, Klein said.

"Most of them won't tell me their real names because they're terrified," Klein said.

Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Los Angeles said Thursday that the church opposes the views expressed in the inflammatory movie, and, initially, none of his priests recognized Nakoula as a congregant. On Thursday morning, Nakoula called Serapion and said he had attended services at the church in Bellflower, Calif.

Serapion told the AP that Nakoula immediately claimed innocence on the phone call, saying there had been a mix-up with his name and he had no involvement with the movie.

"This is the first sentence he mentioned, that is 'I want to tell you I am not part of it,'" said Serapion.

Serapion told the AP he confirmed with the priest in Bellflower that Nakoula had once gone to the parish but hadn't been to services in a very long time.

Serapion said only "God knows" if Nakoula was truthful, but the holy man told Nakoula the filmmaker must take responsibility.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said Klein is a former Marine and longtime religious-right activist who has helped train paramilitary militias at a California church. It described Klein as founder of Courageous Christians United, which conducts protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.

Google Inc., which owns YouTube, pulled down the video Wednesday in Egypt, citing a legal complaint. It was still accessible in the U.S. and other countries.

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Indonesia urges calm, puts 250 police on alert ahead of expected protest at US Embassy

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian leaders and a prominent cleric have urged calm in the world's largest Muslim majority nation ahead of expected protests over an anti-Islam film that has sparked anger among followers.

Jakarta police spokesman Col. Rikwanto says the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta did not request any increased security, but 250 riot police have been put on alert.

The embassy issued an email to American citizens saying a demonstration with an estimated 300 people was expected after Friday prayers.

The film "Innocence of Muslims" ridicules the religion and depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman.

Filmmaker's fake identity unravels quickly The man whose anti-Muslim film ignited a wave of violence is not Israeli — nor is he named "Sam Bacile." His real name

Attorney General Eric Holder said that Justice Department officials had opened a criminal investigation into the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other diplomats killed during an attack on the American mission in Benghazi. It was not immediately clear whether authorities were focusing on the California filmmaker as part of that probe.

A federal law enforcement official said Thursday that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was the man behind "Innocence of Muslims," a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that sparked protests earlier in the week in Egypt and Libya and now in Yemen. U.S. authorities are investigating whether the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya came during a terrorist attack.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Nakoula was connected to the persona of Sam Bacile, a figure who initially claimed to be the writer and director of the film. But Bacile quickly turned out to a false identity and the Associated Press traced a cellphone number used by Bacile to a southern California house where Nakoula was found.

Bacile initially claimed a Jewish and Israeli background. But others involved in the film said his statements were contrived as evidence mounted that the film's key player was a southern Californian Coptic Christian with a checkered past.

Nakoula told The Associated Press in an interview outside Los Angeles Wednesday that he managed logistics for the company that produced "Innocence of Muslims," which mocked Muslims and the prophet Muhammad.

Nakoula denied that he was Bacile and insisted he did not direct the film, though he said he knew Bacile. But federal court papers filed against Nakoula in a 2010 criminal prosecution said that he had used numerous aliases in the past. Among the fake names, the documents said, were Nicola Bacily, Robert Bacily and Erwin Salameh, all similar to the Sam Bacile persona. Other aliases described in the documents included Ahmad Hamdy, Kritbag Difrat and PJ Tobacco.

During a conversation outside his home, Nakoula 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 that middle name as well as other connections to the Bacile persona.

The AP located Bacile after obtaining his cellphone number from Morris Sadek, a conservativeCoptic Christian in the U.S. who had promoted the anti-Muslim film in recent days on his website. Egypt's Christian Coptic populace 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 sparked outrage in the Arab world when he burned Qurans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, said he spoke with the movie's director on the phone Wednesday and prayed for him. Jones said he has not met the filmmaker in person but added that the man contacted him a few weeks ago about promoting the movie. Jones and others who have dealt with the filmmaker said Wednesday that Bacile was hiding his real identity.

"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. He was generally a little shook up concerning this situation."

The YouTube account under the username "Sam Bacile," which was used to publish excerpts of the provocative movie in July, was used to post comments online as recently as Tuesday, including this defense of the film written in Arabic: "It is a 100 percent American movie, you cows."

Nakoula, who talked guardedly about his role, pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Leigh Williams said Nakoula set up fraudulent bank accounts using stolen identities and Social Security numbers; then, checks from those accounts would be deposited into other bogus accounts from which Nakoula would withdraw money at ATM machines.

It was "basically a check-kiting scheme," the prosecutor told the AP. "You try to get the money out of the bank before the bank realizes they are drawn from a fraudulent account. There basically is no money."

Prior to his bank fraud conviction, Nakoula struggled with a series of financial problems in recent years, according to California state tax and bankruptcy records. In June 2006, a $191,000 tax lien was filed against him in the Los Angeles County Recorder of Deeds office. In 1997, a $106,000 lien was filed against him in Orange County.

American actors and actresses who appeared in "Innocence of Muslims" issued a joint statement Wednesday saying they were misled about the project and alleged that some of their dialogue was crudely dubbed during post-production.

In the English-language version of the trailer, direct references to Muhammad appear to be the result of post-production changes to the movie. Either actors aren't seen when the name "Muhammad" is spoken in the overdubbed sound, or they appear to be mouthing something else as the name of the prophet is spoken.

"The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," said the statement, obtained by the Los Angeles Times. "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."

One of the actresses, Cindy Lee Garcia, told KERO-TV in Bakersfield that the film was originally titled "Desert Warriors" and that the script did not contain offensive references to Islam.

She wants her name cleared.

"When I found out this movie had caused all this havoc, I called Sam and asked him why, what happened, why did he do this? I said, 'Why did you do this to us, to me and to us?' And he said, 'Tell the world that it wasn't you that did it, it was me, the one who wrote the script, because I'm tired of the radical Muslims running around killing everyone,'" she said.

Garcia said the director, who identified himself as Bacile, told her then that he was Egyptian.

The person who identified himself as Bacile and described himself as the film's writer and director told the AP on Tuesday that he had gone into hiding. But doubts rose about the man's identity amid a flurry of false claims about his background and role in the purported film.

Bacile told the AP he was an Israeli-born, 56-year-old Jewish writer and director. But a Christian activist involved in the film project, Steve Klein, told the AP on Wednesday that Bacile was a pseudonym and that he was Christian.

Klein had told the AP on Tuesday that the filmmaker was an Israeli Jew who was concerned for family members who live in Egypt.

Officials in Israel said there was no record of Bacile as an Israeli citizen.

When the AP initially left a message for Bacile, Klein contacted the AP from another number to confirm the interview request was legitimate; then Bacile called back from his own cellphone.

Klein said he didn't know the real name of the man he called "Sam," who came to him for advice on First Amendment issues.

About 15 key players from the Middle East — people from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, and a couple of Coptic Christians from Egypt — worked on the film, Klein said.

"Most of them won't tell me their real names because they're terrified," Klein said. "He was really scared and now he's so nervous. He's turned off his phone."

An official of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Los Angeles said in a statement Thursday that the church's adherents had no involvement in the "inflammatory movie about the prophet of Islam." An official identified as HG Bishop Serapion, of the Coptic Orthodox of Los Angeles, said that "the producers of this movie should be responsible for their actions. The name of our blessed parishioners should not be associated with the efforts of individuals who have ulterior motives."

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said Klein is a former Marine and longtime religious-right activist who has helped train paramilitary militias at a California church. It described Klein as founder of Courageous Christians United, which conducts protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.

It quoted Klein as saying he believes that California is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood sleeper cells "who are awaiting the trigger date and will begin randomly killing as many of us as they can."

In his brief interview with the AP, the man identifying himself as Bacile called Islam a cancer and said he intended the film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.

But several key facts Bacile provided proved false or questionable. Bacile told the AP he was 56 but identified himself on his YouTube profile as 74. Bacile said he is a real estate developer, but Bacile does not appear in searches of California state licenses, including the Department of Real Estate.

Hollywood and California film industry groups and permit agencies said they had no records of the project under the name "Innocence of Muslims," but a Los Angeles film permit agency later found a record of a movie filmed in Los Angeles last year under the working title "Desert Warriors."

A man who answered a phone listed for the Vine Theater, a faded Hollywood movie house, confirmed that the film had run for a least a day, and possibly longer, several months ago, arranged by a customer known as "Sam."

Google Inc., which owns YouTube, pulled down the video Wednesday in Egypt, citing a legal complaint. It was still accessible in the U.S. and other countries.

Klein told the AP he vowed to help make the movie but warned the filmmaker that "you're going to be the next Theo van Gogh." Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.

"We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen," Klein said.

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Braun and Sullivan reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Gillian Flaccus, Shaya Tayefe Mohajer and Michael Blood in Los Angeles, Tamara Lush in Tampa, Fla., and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.