The filmmaker behind “Innocence of Muslims” — the low-budget film that’s been blamed by many for the wave of violence that erupted in the Mideast this fall — was sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt on Wednesday, NBC News reported.
The Egyptian-American filmmaker, who has gone by a number of aliases and was most recently identified as Mark Youssef in a U.S. court, was identified as Eli Basily, also known as Nicola Basily, by the Egyptian court, NBC said.
The trailer for the film sparked outrage earlier this year when the Arabic translation hit the Internet. Cast members from the film have said they were misled about the nature of the project, and that the offensive dialogue was later dubbed in.
Youssef, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian, was sentenced to a year in prison in California earlier this month, after admitting that he had violated his probation stemming from an earlier bank-fraud conviction.
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