Bid to halt anti-Islam films

A US judge has rejected a request to force YouTube to remove an anti-Muslim film trailer that has been blamed for causing deadly violence in the Middle East.

Judge Luis Lavin in Los Angeles rejected the request from Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress who appears in the clip, in part because the man behind the film was not served with a copy of the lawsuit.

Ms Garcia says she and her family have been threatened and her career damaged since the 14-minute trailer for Innocence of Muslims surfaced.

She says she was duped by the man behind the clip and that neither anti-Muslim content nor the name of Prophet Mohammed were mentioned in the script for the film she thought she was making.

The lawsuit says Ms Garcia thought she was appearing in an ancient Egyptian adventure film called Desert Warriors. Dialogue in the amateurish film was later dubbed to include anti-Islamic messages and to portray Mohammed as a fraud, a womaniser and a child molester. It was also translated into Arabic.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind the trailer, has gone into hiding.

“My whole life has been turned upside down in every aspect,” Ms Garcia said before heading into court.

“I think it’s demoralising, degrading,” she said of the film. “I think it needs to come off.”

Her lawsuit against Nakoula alleged fraud and slander.

YouTube said it was reviewing the complaint, and its lawyers were in court. The site is owned by search giant Google.

“The film is vile and reprehensible,” Ms Garcia’s lawyer, M. Cris Armenta, wrote in the document.

Nakoula, who is on probation for a bank fraud case in which he opened 600 fraudulent credit accounts, in civil matters.

According to the terms of his probation, Nakoula was allowed to only access websites with the permission of probation officials and for work purposes. It is unclear who uploaded the film to YouTube.

The lawsuit also names Sam Bacile, an alias that Nakoula gave to The Associated Press after the trailer emerged.