US Bashes $100K Bounty on Anti-Islam Filmmaker

A US official has called it "inflammatory and inappropriate" for a Pakistani minister to offer a $100,000 bounty for killing the filmmaker of Innocence of Muslims. Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, who made the offer, said he would pay the bounty out of his own pocket as protests continued yesterday against the anti-Islamic film. Bilour, who called himself a "Muslim first and a government representative second," said he has invited the Taliban and al-Qaeda to carry out the assassination, reports CNN. Pakistani government officials have similarly blasted the offer.

A US State Department official told the BBC yesterday: "The president and secretary of state have both said the video at the core of this is offensive, disgusting, and reprehensible—but that is no justification for violence, and it is important for responsible leaders to stand up and speak out against violence." In another threat, this one aimed at the French publication Charlie Hebdo for printing cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, an 18-year-old man who threatened the magazine's editors on Facebook has been charged with terrorism-related activity. (More anti-Islam film stories.)