Convicted Nakoula has no regrets over portrayal of Prophet Mohammed

The convicted fraudster behind an online video that outraged Muslims with its portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed as a thuggish deviant says has no regrets, The New York Times reported yesterday.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula's crude trailer for Innocence of Muslims first appeared on YouTube in July, but sparked protests worldwide in September in the wake of a deadly attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Nakoula, convicted of bank fraud in 2010, was later arrested in Los Angeles for violating the terms of his release on probation, for which he now is serving a one-year prison sentence.

In what The New York Times called his first public remarks since his return to jail, Nakoula said he would go to great lengths to convey what he called "the actual truth" about Mohammed.

"I thought, before I wrote this script, that I should burn myself in a public square to let the American people and the people of the world know this message," said Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian immigrant from Egypt.

He cited the killing of 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in November 2009 - for which a Muslim army psychiatrist has been charged - as evidence of "atrocities" carried out "under the sign of Allah".

The Innocence of Muslim trailer was initially blamed for stirring the September attack in Benghazi in which United States ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. The Obama administration later attributed the incident to terrorism.

The trailer was 14 minutes long, but The New York Times said it had confirmed the existence of a full-length version (one hour and 40 minutes) with people who had seen it on DVD.