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Actress: Anti-Islam Filmmaker Lied And Made Me Look Like A 'Religious Bigot'

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a.k.a. Sam Bacile, made her look like a religious bigot by "having hateful words put in her mouth" when he dubbed a new soundtrack into the anti-Islam video Innocence of Muslims that has sparked violence and protests around the Muslim world, one of the actresses in the video charges.

Cindy Lee Garcia has filed an application for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction request in California's Superior Court against Nakoula and YouTube (on which a trailer for the video has been posted). She wants YouTube to remove the trailer. So far, YouTube has declined to so so — but has put the video off limits to users from some Muslim nations.

LAWeekly has posted a copy of Garcia's court filing here. In it, she repeats things that she and another actress have previously said — particularly, that they thought the film was going to be an adventure flick called Desert Warrior.

But, the filing charges, the film was "changed grotesquely to make it appear that Ms. Garcia voluntarily performed in a hateful anti-Islamic production. The film is vile and reprehensible." What's more, Garcia says, she has received death threats, lost a job and can no longer see her grandchildren out of concern for their safety.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.