Creator Of Anti-Muslim Film Being Released From Custody

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Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in a courtroom sketch done on Sept. 27, 2012.

Mona Shafer Edwards/AP

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, whose Innocence of Muslims film sparked deadly protests in Muslim nations in the summer of 2012, is being released from federal custody on Thursday. He'll have served slightly less than the 1-year sentence he was given for violating the conditions of his probation on an earlier bank-fraud conviction.

CNN says the 56-year-old Nakoula has most recently been living in a Southern California halfway house. The online federal prison locator says he's been in San Pedro, Calif.

He was sent to prison last year because the conditions of his probation included not using aliases and not using computers or the Internet for five years. He did those things while producing and distributing his anti-Muslim film.

After the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the deaths there of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on Sunday TV talk shows and pointed to the film as being a spark behind the violence.

When it became clear that it had been an organized attack by men with links to terrorist organizations and not a spontaneous protest about the film, Republicans accused the Obama administration of trying to mislead the American public during a presidential campaign. As NPR's David Welna reported last weekend, House Republicans continue to hold hearings about the attack and the administration's response.

Montana Rapist Being Freed After Serving 30-Day Sentence

Stacey Dean Rambold, the Montana teacher who got sentenced to 30 days in jail for the 2007 rape of a 14-year-old student who later killed herself, is to be released from custody Thursday.

As we've reported, "District Judge G. Todd Baugh unleashed a firestorm of criticism when he issued the lenient sentence saying that the victim ... 'seemed older than her chronological age' " and that she supposedly had some control over the situation that led to her rape.

Baugh subsequently apologized. Montana's attorney general is appealing the sentence.

On Wednesday, the victim's mother said Rambold is "still skating" from justice, as The Associated Press reports. The wire service adds that:

"Tears streamed down Auliea Hanlon's face as she described the emotions that have at times overwhelmed her since a church counselor her daughter confided in first told Hanlon about the rape. ...

" 'I figured he'd be fired, go to jail, and she would be vindicated, and that would be the end of it,' Hanlon said Wednesday. 'Instead, here it is six years later, still going on, and he's getting out. ... He's still skating.' "

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Stacey Dean Rambold.

Montana Department of Corrections