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Innocence of Muslims Filmmaker Arrested, Jailed
sycodon writes "Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind the film Innocence of Muslims, has been arrested and jailed in Los Angeles for probation violations. The situation is a win-win for the Obama administration, who can now appear to be punishing the man whose film sparked protests and riots around the world, but at the same time simply enforcing the law, as all evidence indeed suggests Nakoula violated the terms of his probation."
What does his apparently violating parole have at all to do with this site?
They should have done this weeks ago. It was clear he violated his probation from the beginning.
It's very important for Muslims across the world to understand that he was NOT arrested and jailed for the CONTENT of that movie, but because he continually provided false aliases to the judge and the police in violation of his probation.
I wonder if the protesters in Egypt will understand this...my guess is probably not.
The situation is a win-win for the Obama administration, who can now appear to be punishing the man whose film sparked protests and riots around the world.
This is outrageously ridiculous. Why would it be a "win-win" for the Obama administration to appear to be punishing someone for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech?
It didn't spark riots around the world. At least the ambassador in Libya was killed in a targeted attack by Al Qaeda. The ambassador was worried about his safety for weeks before his death. We know this because CNN reporters walked into the compound and looked around. Security was NOT good at this place.
If you've violated probation, you've shown to the courts that you cannot be trusted. No bond is the correct action here.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I'll be so fucking glad when we kick Bush out of office....
Clearly, he's a dirtbag
It is not illegal to be a dirtbag.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." -- H. L. Mencken
Hope they have enough on him to keep him locked up.
Is he really being locked up for violating his probation, or is that just a justification to arrest someone for saying something inconvenient? Supposedly he as arrested for making false statements to his probation officer. Is that something that a normal person would be jailed for?
> > Clearly, he's a dirtbag
> It is not illegal to be a dirtbag.
Clearly you see the word "illegal" everywhere, even when it hasn't been written.
The trouble with freedom of speech is that speech isn't just words.
Otherwise Islam's fatwahs are merely free speech.
Imams calling for the destruction of Israel and the Great Satan are just free speech.
And talking dirty to children is just free speech.
Point is you only support free speech that YOU agree is free speech but use the fact that you agree something is free speech that another disagrees is free speech as "proof" that you agree with free speech more.
You just have a different range of what you call free.
At least the Muslims demanding this movie be banned aren't being hypocrites over it.
Are you suggesting it's possible to have free speech and yet ban hate speech? That's highly offensive to me. You should be arrested!
They won't stop. They will demand we hand him over so they can slowly behead him and post that on the internet then drag his body though the streets and hang it from some bridge.
Not Lindsey Lohan. He's the new Billy Mays. He's already sold us one product. Next, he'll unveil OrthodOxy-Clean and the Sham-Tao!
Everything is better with chainsaws.
So to you, the application of justice should be dependent on the political views someone espouses? The law should treat someone differently based on what he's said in public? How did you get from free speech to there?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I think that's not at all true. I assume the local police don't give a shit about foreign policy. If that's true, who ordered the arrest? Obama? Why would he do that?
What's much more likely is that once media reports of him apparently violating probation, the local PD felt pressure from the people and local government to arrest the guy for said parole violations. Nothing more.
Yes, he really is being jailed for his actual wrongdoings. You are not allowed to use aliases on probation. He used an alias and did something infamous with it.
Certainly, I imagine people do this all the time and are not caught, usually because it simply does not come to light, particularly since an alias has the effect of making it harder to tie a person to what they do under their alias. In this case, what he did is not the issue, it is that it was infamous enough for him to be caught violating his probation. It would be a very, very dumb Probation Officer who, when faced with his convict's publicly obvious non-compliance, did not enforce the conditions of Probation.
Remember, he's already a convicted criminal who is only free on probation on the guarantee of good behavior and specific provisions meant to ensure he remains on good behavior. He's not so much being thrown in jail as simply returned to jail.
Is this incredibly convenient for the Obama Administration? Hell, yes. Is it a matter of silencing him? Not at all.
That's how parole works...
They set up enough hoops and demands that you have to spend all your time keeping up. Mostly, that's to keep you out of trouble.. But it also provides plenty of technicalities when you become a nuisance. There's something you missed for them to violate you over whenever they need it.
Obama can't be seen as punishing him for exercising free speech.
Anybody who believes that is going to subsequently demand than anybody who says anything equally inflammatory be equally punished. And if those hypothetical people haven't broken their parole, nothing at all will happen.
It needs to be clear, this guy is being arrested only because he violated the terms of his parole in terms of using an alias or the internet. But it's essentially unrelated to the film and that has to be made clear.
There is simply no way the US government can be seen to be suppressing free speech. The last thing Obama wants to do is use this to his advantage. Because the reality is, that he isn't being punished for free speech -- he's being punished because he's a shady guy who violated his parole.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That would make sense...except that the violations at issue occurred during the investigation of whether or not he posted the video, which itself would have violated the terms of his probation.
Its not about violations known in advance and held in reserve and then used as retribution for a "perfectly legal" act, "uppity" or otherwise.
We should not apologize for free speech, no matter who it offends.
Unless a foreigner makes a political video that offends the US, in which case we reserve the right to brand him a terrorist and send a drone to assassinate him in his own country.
He's locked up because he violated the terms of his probation. He apparently has a pathological tendency to refuse to give his real name to authorities or anyone else for that matter, and the Judge had enough of it.
At the court hearing about his parole violation he told the Judge that the original name he used during his criminal prosecution and incarceration wasn't his real name.
Think about that for a minute, he's jailed for fraud and ordered as a condition of probation not to use aliases, only his legal name and he tells the judge evaluating his compliance that the name he used in the previous trial was a fake. It's highly unusual in situations like this for a judge to incarcerate a parolee before the hearing, she threw him in jail because she said the court has no confidence he's not a liar and flight risk.
And might I add, just because you haven't bothered to follow the case that it makes your assertion that no one believes this isn't political asinine. Obama and the state department has almost zero influence over department of federal paroles (it's mostly courts administered). His parole conditions were public nearly a day after the whole thing went public, including links to all the PDFs on popehat.
Yes, because a check fraud conviction with a judicially applied condition of not using the Internet except under approval of the court appointed authority is such an uncommon offense against free speech that I've seen and heard it described as "a routine condition". When one is convicted of a crime, one loses certain rights. That's completely consistent with the 14th amendment, deprivation of liberty with due process.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
He was convicted for bank fraud. And then he goes and writes checks to pay for employees using an alias, and his probation conditions make it perfectly clear that the use of any sort of alias violates probation. The guy really stepped in it. This isn't some case of over sleeping and missing a check up with his probation officer.
That pretty much assured we'll be seeing more batshit insane rioting in the future. From the Muslim World's perspective, the following events occured: 1) Guy releases a movie insulting Islam 2) The Middle East explodes into violent rioting, killing hundreds of people 3) We arrest the guy to quell them. So in other words, riot more! The more Americans you kill, embassy you torch and flags you rip up, the more the US will bow to your whim! Positive reinforcement for everybody! I fucking hate this country.
Clearly you see the word "illegal" everywhere, even when it hasn't been written.
It's not illegal to see the word illegal everywhere.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Nobody's apologizing, failfuck
I guess you didn't get the memo the U.S. is doing just that, and paying $70k of your money to do so.
What was that you called people that got things wrong again? Seems like it rather more applies to yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not arrested for parole violations? He had two parole conditions and he violated both!! In fact he told the judge yesterday that the name he used during his original trial and incarceration was a fake. This is on the order a sex crime parolee with a condition not to have unsupervised contact with children running a bloody day care. They absolutely put people in jail all the time for violating parole. It's so common it's a daily occurrence for nearly every single parole officer.
Last I heard, they still haven't got Hoffa.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
He's a scumbag con man that violated the terms of his probation. I think we can come to an agreement on the word, "illegal" here.
As for the rest of your rant, start reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States#Categorical_exclusions
Absolutely correct. California could be better using their time and effort protecting us from Linsey Lohan and others like her, but they release them after 45 minutes because the jails are too full. But this guy said something (supposedly) unpopular, so the system is going after him with everything they can come up with. This is clearly an effort to appease a supposedly religious group by further eroding basic American freedoms.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Getting bail has jack shit to do with how serious your crime was, and everything to do with a) your likelihood of commiting another crime while out (very small for most murderers), and b) your trustworthiness, i.e. the likelihood the government will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars tracking you down after you jump bail. In other words, it's an expression of how much the government trusts you to behave. Breaking probation indicates he is untrustworthy: therefore, no bail.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
He's locked up because he violated the terms of his probation. He apparently has a pathological tendency to refuse to give his real name to authorities or anyone else for that matter, and the Judge had enough of it.
If you had people who wanted to kill you and had the means to falsify badges/I.D./uniforms you would be giving out false names too. I concede that his own actions caused his current predicament and I don't condone anything he has put out but I can understand his motivations for lying about his name..
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
LA has a large number of Muslim inmates. I would hardly consider him safe in jail there.
I thought it was for the criminally bad acting and scripting of the movie. If you jail people for lying then we have to put all of Congress in jail.
There's no legal concept of "hate speech" in USA, thankfully. There's "fighting words", but that's a different concept.
You might be thinking of Capone, convicted on tax evasion.
Shouldn't be a problem. Islam is a religion of peace.
Some men have had their fucking head cut of and sewn back on again without losing the ability to fuck. Having your regular head cut off is much worse. You are not guaranteed to survive, even if it is sewn on again immediately.
I can understand his motivations for lying about his name.
He had used fake names as part of his original scamming, and one condition of his probation was NOT to use false names.
I think he started giving out false names BEFORE people wanted to kill him. Sure NOW he has a good reason to do it, but that was his own choice. He knew that he was prohibited from using aliases for his past crimes, so prison shouldn't come as much of a shock to him (at least until the muslim inmates figure out who he is).
The only killing we have seen was from a terrorist attack on an embassy, not from a protest.
How many "protests" also involve quiet ambushes on secret safe-houses?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Clearly, he's a dirtbag
It is not illegal to be a dirtbag.
He doesn't need to be a criminal for AC to wish bad things upon him. Always struck me as strange how slashdotters are quick to forget that not everyone is a lawyer talking about laws.
Arr, fine. I'll respond, though I suspect this is a troll. Freedom of speech does not cover shouting fire in a crowded theatre. Freedom of speech does not cover incitement to violence. Calling a specific group of people violent is freedom of speech, just as much as those people can call themselves non violent and the original speaker an idiot. (Note that this is the response generally accepted in polite society and the response that most sensible, educated people had to this video.) Calling for the man who made the offending remark's head to be chopped off is direct incitement to violence, thus, bad for society as a whole.
This guy is completely 100% irrelevant to anything that's happening in the Middle East. Go to youtube and in one minute you can find a dozen anti-Islam videos made by various random people. When certain extremist groups in the Middle East want to incite violence for their own political purposes, they will find a catalyst easily enough, just like with Mohammed cartoons etc, it doesn't matter what that catalyst is. The biggest issue here for me is that the administration is still talking about the stupid irrelevant film instead of the fact that the Libya attack was obviously a planned and successful Al Qaeda operation to assassinate a US ambassador and that we didn't do enough to prevent it. But that wouldn't look good, would it, so better to focus everybody's attention on a particular US citizen and make him take the blame. Shameful.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
there is no evidence to support the claim that he was a child-molester (among other accusations).
It depends on your definition of "child molester". If having sex with a prepubescent child is sufficient, then he definitely qualifies based on authentic Islamic hadith.
Either way, slander/libel is a civil offense, not criminal, and it requires the offended party to sue.
The trouble with freedom of speech is that speech isn't just words. Otherwise Islam's fatwahs are merely free speech.
Fatwahs are murder contracts, that offer a reward for murder. Soliciting murder is a crime.
The video may have offended some, but was not a direct request for criminal activity.
He's locked up because he violated the terms of his probation. He apparently has a pathological tendency to refuse to give his real name to authorities or anyone else for that matter, and the Judge had enough of it.
If you had people who wanted to kill you and had the means to falsify badges/I.D./uniforms you would be giving out false names too. I concede that his own actions caused his current predicament and I don't condone anything he has put out but I can understand his motivations for lying about his name..
I understand his motivations. I also understand that providing false identities to LEOs while on legal probation is a crime in itself, and that if a person commit a crime, they will be punished accordingly.
This is all much ado about nothing.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm a firm believer in freedom of speech, but there is still such a thing as having some taste, and having some common sense. Clearly this guy has, at the very least, poor judgement, and perhaps poor impulse control, and while I'm not going to lay 100% of the blame on him for the violence in the Middle East due to his ill-advised (and poorly produced, from what I hear) video, he certainly is guilty of being the catalyst.
That's very loaded language. He's not "guilty" of anything - at least in the context of the Islamic hissy-fit business. He is a catalyst, like that teacher who sparked an armed and angry lynch mob in Sudan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_teddy_bear_blasphemy_case
Granted, his actions were provocative, while the teacher's were not. While his actions were inadvisable, 100% of the blame lies with the angry nutjobs and the rabble rousers. If we apportion any blame at all to this guy then we may as well issue mitigation points to anyone taking offence. If some guy in the street says that my mother is a scabby whore, should he share the blame if I were to then pull out a knife and cut out his liver? He's a factor in what happened, but what he did is rendered academic by my crazy response. Staying with that example, if I reacted so badly, is it possible that this reaction is based on more than just this single incident? There's way more happening here than just a bunch of cavemen getting worked up over a video.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
How much is mallice, and how much is stupidity? How much of it changes anything at all?
If you jail people for lying then we have to put all of Congress in jail.
You say that, but I'm sure that there are downsides as well.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Are you sure it's not because it's both? I mean Romney is a pretty friggin big idiot after all.
Ah, the apologist logic here is pathetic.
That doesn't change the definition of Free Speech. That just means that if you have threats along with your Free Speech, then it changes the issue entirely. It's the threat that is the issue, and not the speech itself.
The issue at hand is from a terribly low budget movie's trailer, which is insulting to Muslims. It is not threatening. Calling for the destruction of Israel is threatening, particularly when said Imam is calling upon his followers to make it happen.
This is no different than the Westboro Baptists that go around protesting at military funerals. They can get away with it it because it's not threatening anybody, and that's why it is the unfortunate side of acceptable Free Speech.
The issue to them is very cut and dry, but it is far from not being hypocritical. You cannot insult Islam in any way. But the reverse is completely acceptable; they can insult your nation (e.g, Great Satan, which also associates religious aspects to it), or your religion (e.g, Jews), and you had better accept it. And they're going to do it while they destroy your embassy, even if your nation wasn't involved at all (e.g., German Embassy protests).
But you're right, I guess I don't see any hypocrisy in there. Keep running around with your blinders on.
I believe that you have confused the excuse for him being arrested for the reason that the government started looking for excuses in the first place. The reason that he is arrested is suppression of free speech. The excuse is the things that you mention, which otherwise would have never been acted on by the government (just like they had been ignored for years prior).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
read the damn article. He was told not to use false aliases.
During the course of the investigation, the prosecutor said he had duped multiple people with false bank accounts, bad checks, and misrepresenting himself to people with business dealings. Being a "Danger to Society" doesn't have to mean being a violent thug. People who make a living by hoodwinking others at every opportunity are just as bad.
The authorities DID NOT KNOW he had been violating his parole after 2010; the interest surrounding the movie brought this to their attention.
So again, I call bullshit.
It is not illegal to be a dirtbag.
Actually, in some cases it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words . See also incitement to riot.
Even in the US, there's provisions which restrict freedom of speech. The US has, far and above, the most liberal free speech laws in the world, and there's still provision in US law that could make what he did illegal. I haven't seen the film in question, so I can't really give an opinion one way or the other on whether what he did actually was inciteful, but there is provision in US law to make inciteful speech illegal.
In the rest of the civilized world, there wouldn't be any question... every developed country in the world other than the US, and most of the developing nations with free speech, have restrictions on free speech that essentially boil down to a basic rule: your right to say what you want stops at my right to be safe and free. If what you're saying can cause me harm, and it's not 100% true and backed up by verifiable facts, you're not allowed to say it. Even if it is backed up by verifiable facts, if it is likely to incite hatred or violence against me (say you're telling the wrong people I'm a lesbian), then you're not allowed to say it either.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether your constitution protects your right to speak... your actions have consequences, and you need to take responsibility for them. The US Constitution is *not* a carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want, and the free speech provision says nothing about being exempt from the consequences of your speech, it only says that they won't prevent you from speaking in the first place.
You must remember though that he is locked up in the state of California.
Because of recent goings on here almost no one on parole in the state can be locked up for parole violations.
Only new crimes. Now probation is a little different and on the county level. But seriously. If we are not going to violate parolees in the state then putting a guy in jail for a simple probation violation just would not ever happen with anyone but this guy.
He is locked up right now because people with power found it to be to their advantage to have him locked up. No other reason.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I can understand that, given the amount of publicity both nationally and worldwide, the government really had little choice but to enforce the probation terms once it came out who the filmmaker really was and that he must have violated the terms to go on YouTube to upload it.
But when is someone going to point out that probation terms like these are absurd on their face? The Internet is a basic part of modern life. Everyone uses it, and even someone who tries to avoid it might well find themselves violating the terms by accident. (For instance, is using a GPS device counted as using the Internet? From a technical standpoint, that's often what is happening.) Probation terms ordering people to stay away from computers might have made some sense back in the days of Kevin Mitnick and Captain Crunch, but they are utter nonsense in 2012. You might as well make a probation term telling someone they can't watch TV or read a newspaper.
On one hand, they got the guy who broke he law, that's a win. But on the other, it makes it look like he's being jailed for expressing his opinion about something controversial. That's a not a win, that's a loss.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Sure, anyone can probably be busted for some lame excuse, but this guy was convicted of actual criminal behavior before he was ever involved in this. The worst thing here is that he pissed people off and they are getting back at him. Still, you know what? I'd say he has the right to say what he likes, but he doesn't have the right to say it without people disliking him for it. If he hadn't been doing something illegal already, he'd still be walking the streets right now, video or not. It just so happens that he made some people *very* interested in whether he was doing something wrong. As it stands, I'd say his video is pretty good evidence of some shockingly bad decision making skills, so a criminal conviction is no surprise there.
He made it his business to insult and bait an entire population, and that was entirely legal, but I'm just not really going to feel very bad when he suffers from the unforeseen consequences of his actions. What he did was legal, and his return to jail is legal too. I don't believe in karma, but if I did, I'd say karma is a bitch.
He's a felon on parole. There are conditions to that parole. If a felon offered parole doesn't want to agree to the conditions of his release, he is welcome to stay in prison, where he can continue to say whatever he would like.
Being on parole and violating the conditions of your parole in a spectacular manner and NOT expecting to be put back in prison as a result is ridiculously dumb.
For example, one of the conditions of his parole that he not use the internet unsupervised.
If he goes to the library and uses the internet unsupervised, likely no one notices and nothing happens.
If he goes to the library and uses the internet to start a blog claiming Mitt Romney is a polygamist, and it gets picked up by the media, he's going back to prison.
Parolees should not violate parole. Parolees who do not want to go back to prison should definitely not get CAUGHT violating parole.
You don't get a free pass just because you say something extremely objectionable while violating your parole.
paintball
We're not talking about bond, we're talking about parole. And yes, murderers get released on parole just like this guy was. And when murderers violate that parole, just like this guy did, they get put back in prison, just like this guy will.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
the administration is still talking about the stupid irrelevant film instead of the fact that the Libya attack was obviously a planned and successful Al Qaeda operation to assassinate a US ambassador
What? How about this? I for one would like to avoid making foreign policy based on assumptions and hearsay. Or perhaps you're a Mittens man and would rather jump to wild conclusions before any real information is available?
And before you start wailing about how some of those early baseless assumptions turned out to be partly true, I would remind you that a broken clock is right twice a day...
Also, while the attack was clearly a blow to our local Libyan intelligence operation - in addition to the obvious human tragedy - the impact of the movie and its subsequent protests are more troubling because they demonstrate how there is a downside to greater freedom of expression in the region. There is clearly an attempt by extremists (religious and governmental) to hijack that freedom to let everyone know that they are still a potent force. The trick is to respect the protests while not allowing them to be completely one-sided. The counter-protests in Libya are a good example of this.
When has the media ever been fair. They don't even cover natural disasters honestly. I saw coverage of a fire near where I live, and from the TV it looked like the entire city was in flames. Yeah, it was pretty bad, but it covered less than 1/10th (I'm not sure how much less), as I discovered when I got back.
In this case I can't complain about they way they are panning Romney. What I do object to is that before the election started they didn't criticize Obama properly. He's an enemy of freedom, possibly an enemy of humanity (though that *may* be an overstatement). That Romney is worse doesn't mean I feel I can vote for Obama. Talk about throwing your vote away...voting for either of them is worse than throwing your vote away. So I'll vote for some minor party, and be sorry that the incompetent that I vote for doesn't have a chance to win. (None of the minor parties I've investigated have a candidate who could even understand more than a fraction of the job of a president. Different parties understand different fractions. And none of them could get much cooperation from congress...or maybe they could? After all, none of the minor parties are the official enemy...
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You got it. The followers of the prophet wouldn't be nearly as upset if it was just nonsense that was spouted. They are upset that it was truth that was said. Makes their entire belief system seem a bit silly.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.