An actress who appeared in an anti-Islam film that stoked violence in the Middle East failed in her second legal bid to get the video taken down from the Internet.
A federal judge in Los Angeles on Friday denied a request for a court order by Cindy Lee Garcia to get YouTube to remove the clip depicting the Prophet Mohammad as a fool and a sexual deviant.
The ruling was based on the decision that Garcia was unlikely to prevail on her claims of copyright infringement.
“I think it’s unfortunate that Cindy has yet to have her day in court, said her attorney, Cris Armenta, who added she plans to appeal the ruling. “While we respect the judge’s ruling, we vehemently disagree with it.”
The nearly 14-minute trailer for "Innocence of Muslims" was posted to YouTube on July 2.
It was blamed for stoking anti-U.S. protests in parts of the Muslim world. It was initially blamed on the deadly attacks on the American Consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Sept. 11 that killed the four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. The U.S. State Department later said the assault was a coordinated, pre-planned attack.
Garcia said she was duped by the filmmaker, Nakoula Nakoula, into believing that the movie would be an adventure film called “Desert Warrior” and that her lines were duped in post production to have her accuse the prophet Mohammed of being a child molester, court records said.
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She has said she and her family have received death threats since the video was posted online and her career tarnished.
Nakoula, a self-described Coptic Christian and convicted check fraudster who was on parole, went into hiding after the film was blamed for the Middle East violence. He was arrested in September and was returned to federal jail for violating conditions of his probation. One of the conditions of his parole barred him from using computers or the Internet for five years.
In his first public comments since his incarceration, Nakoula told The New York Times that he didn’t regret making the film.
This was the second legal challenge by Garcia to try to get the video scrubbed from the Internet. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge in September denied Garcia’s request to get the video taken down.
