Actress in 'Innocence of Muslims' Sues Filmmaker for Fraud and Slander
One of the actresses that was involved in the anti-Muslim film "Innocence of Muslims" that ignited violent and deadly protests across the Middle East has filed a lawsuit against the film's maker for fraud and slander.
The actress, Cindy Lee Garcia, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in Los Angeles and claims she was tricked by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who is the alleged creator of the film.
Garcia maintains that she was unaware of the films anti-Muslim content and the script that she was given had no mention of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad or any sexual scenes. She also claims that she was told by the producers that she would be in a desert adventure film.
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Garcia answered a call for the film through a newspaper ad, according to the lawsuit. She claims that the anti-Muslim overtones were later dubbed into the film, and also later translated into Arabic before being viewed across the Muslim world.
"The film is vile and reprehensible," Garcia's attorney, M. Cris Armenta, wrote in the lawsuit. He stated that Garcia has received several death threats since the film became public.
The film depicts the prophet Mohammad as a womanizing goon whose followers are mindless thugs. It also shows the prophet in compromising sexual positions and offers insults to Islam as punch lines.
Those depictions, coupled with the fact that Muslims find it extremely offensive to depict the prophet in any form, ignited an already flammable base of Islamic extremists.
Nakoula is reportedly already in hiding and anticipated the backlash that his film would cause. The California-based filmmaker, during a phone call from an undisclosed location, told reporters that Islam is a cancer and that its flawed principals need to be exposed.
"This is a political movie … the U.S. lost a lot of money and a lot of people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're fighting with ideas," Nakoula told Associated Press reporters. "Islam is a cancer, period."
