There was an interesting tidbit found toward the end of a 6-page article written by Serge Kovaleski and Brooks Barnes of the New York Times – in which the two reporters revealed the contents of their interview with Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind the Innocence of Muslims video. Until now, it was only assumed that the Sam Bacile YouTube channel belonged to the filmmaker.
According to Kovaleski and Barnes, the person responsible for creating and maintaining the YouTube account is Nakoula’s twenty one year-old son, Abanob Nakoula:
On July 2, the trailer was posted on YouTube by someone using the name Sam Bacile. Mr. Nakoula’s son said he was the one who did it.
“My dad is not tech-savvy at all, and does not know how to work social media,” Abanob Nakoula said. “So he asked me to take the initiative to spread the word, and I did my best.”
He explained that using the name Sam Bacile, he created a Facebook account before production started and then the YouTube account.
Now that we know who is responsible for the YouTube account, how about some questions about content?
This screenshot was captured on October 5, 2012 (converted from tiff to jpeg on November 28th). At the time, it was the only video found under the channel’s “Likes” tab. The video consists of an interview between a woman from the U.K. who had converted to Islam and an Arabic-speaking man. The woman is effusive in her praise of Islam. The video has since disappeared from the Sam Bacile YouTube account:
Here is a screenshot of the YouTube page today. Note, there are no more “Likes” on the page (the video is no longer posted):
This is the video once liked by Abanob, based on what can logically be deduced from the New York Times piece:
The question it’d be nice to know the answer to is:
Why would someone so anti-Islam “like” a very pro-Islam video?
A logical follow-up question would be:
What made Abanob “un-Like” the video?
Questions about this YouTube account have been raised before.
Ben Barrack is a talk show host and author of the book, Unsung Davids, which features a chapter on Walid Shoebat