December 2, 2012

(JTA) — An actress who was featured in the “Innocence of Muslims” failed in a second bid to have Google remove the controversial anti-Muslim film’s trailer from YouTube.

Cindy Lee Garcia reportedly will appeal the ruling made Friday by a U.S. District Court judge in Santa Clara, Calif.

Garcia in September filed a lawsuit against the film’s director, as well as You Tube and its parent company, Google, Inc., in which she said she was the victim of death threats and could not visit her grandchildren.

“Innocence of Muslims” ridicules the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. A 14-minute trailer dubbed in Arabic sparked riots throughout the Arab world and in Arab communities in other countries.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge in September denied Garcia’s request to issue a temporary restraining order against YouTube and Google to remove the video.

The lawsuit names Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, an Egyptian Coptic Christian living in Southern California, as the organizer of the film who misled Garcia. It also names Sam Bacile, believed to be an alias of Nakoula.

Bacile was named erroneously in the media as the film’s producer and was quoted in reports as saying that he was an Israeli-American real estate developer hoping to help Israel with the film. He also said the film was financed with $5 million by 100 Jewish donors — a claim that also was untrue.

His legal name has since been established to be Mark Basseley Youssef, and he was sentenced last month in Los Angeles to a year in federal prison for probation violations stemming from a check-kiting conviction in 2010.

 
 

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