NYT Confirms Arrest of 'Innocence of Muslims' Filmmaker was Photo-Op to Appease Rioting Muslims

In a long story about the ongoing violence directed at the United States across the Middle East, the New York Times embeds a sly admission regarding the arrest of alleged filmmaker Nakoula Bassely Nakoula:

The film was produced in the United States, though its origins are still shrouded. American federal authorities identified the man behind the film as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55. Though the film does not appear to violate any American laws, the authorities took Mr. Nakoula in for questioning on Saturday over possible federal parole violations connected to an unrelated criminal conviction. That action has done little to tamp down the unrest.

Emphasis added.

Authorities arrested Nakoula at his home in the dead of night last weekend and paraded him before media cameras. The media had been alerted to his arrest beforehand, guaranteeing that images of his arrest would soon hit the Internet and spread across the world. Authorities claimed he was being arrested regarding parole violations, but the arrest came after the Obama administration had publicly blamed his film for the violence.

The New York Times just admitted that that entire scene was a political arrest designed to appease the rioting Muslims.

An administration that is capable of taking such an action is also capable of acquiescing to the demand that the Islamists in Egypt made and publicized prior to the 9-11 embassy attack there: The release of sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993.

Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in US prison for his role in that bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000.

The US State Department is reportedly actively considering negotiations with the new Egyptian government to send Rahman to that country’s custody, citing humanitarian and medical reasons. State denies, and the Department of Justice says no such deal is possible.

But the Department of Justice publicly outed Nakoula, and engineered his public arrest.

h/t Rand Simberg