Facts
In August, 2012, quite probably a middleman of an unknown actor or somebody called Sam Bacile or Nakoula Basseley Nakoula - or for that matter Mark Basseley Youssef, Yousseff M. Basseley, Nicola Bacily or Malid Ahlawi according to US Court documents provided to CNN -, after raising 5m$, hiring a staff and shooting the film, releases an anti-Islam hostile propaganda video. To aide him during the filmmaking, the 'filmmaker' hires a ‘consultant’ - a man confirmed to be a leader of a US-based, anti-Islam extremist group.
Within weeks, the video’s trailer makes its way to Youtube and gets dubbed to Arabic - days later, in early September, a firestorm of protests shook the BMNA region leading to the killing of a US Ambassador and other 3 diplomatic personnel on September 11, 2012, during an orchestrated assault involving heavy weapons and RPGs as well as subsequent storming of US Embassies in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc.
In the United States, events put an enormous tactical pressure on US President Barack Obama and trigger a media firestorm ‘on the nature of the course the Arab Spring societies are to take’. Also, the issue reverberates in the US election campaign as Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger raises doubt about the handling of the crisis by the administration. US authorities seem dully confused; first they reportedly provide protection for, then take the supposed 'filmmaker' in for questioning by probation authorities.
In parallel, the outburst of protests also posed a challenge for newly established governments in Arab Spring countries whose leaders were confronted with the enormous task of handling the heat in countries that are in the first phases of democratic transition.
The events also complicate matters for all involved in Middle-Eastern affairs from Germany to the Pope visiting Lebanon just that time.
