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A Southern California filmmaker linked to an anti-Islamic movie inflaming protests across the Middle East was interviewed Saturday at a Los Angeles sheriff’s station and afterward decided not to return to his home — possibly heading into hiding, authorities said.
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was interviewed by federal probation officers for about a half-hour after 12 a.m. in his hometown of Cerritos, Calif., said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department.
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, convicted of financial crimes, violated terms of his five-year probation. If so, a judge could send him back to prison.
Nakoula went voluntarily to the station, wearing a coat, hat, scarf and glasses that concealed his appearance. His home has been besieged by media for several days.
Whitmore said Nakoula was not handcuffed and the heavy apparel was his idea.
The probation department is reviewing the case of Nakoula, who pleaded no contest to bank fraud charges in 2010 and 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.
Much of the film was shot inside the offices of Media for Christ, a nonprofit based in the Los Angeles-area city of Duarte. The charity raised more than $1 million last year “to glow Jesus’ light” to the world.
The Riverside County man who was a script adviser to the film and who has a long history of anti-Islamic activism told the Press-Enterprise newspaper that he has received multiple death threats.
“I’m really tired,” Steven Klein said when he answered the door of his home in Hemet, Calif., Friday with a pistol in his hand and clad only in white shorts stained with what appeared to be ink.
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