Pakistani Minister Offers $100,000 Bounty for Killing Innocence of Muslims Filmmaker

A Pakistani cabinet minister did something no government anywhere had done in the furor over the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims: he put a price on the filmmaker's head.

At a press conference on Saturday, Federal Minister for Railways Ghulam Ahmed Bilour said he was aware that instigating murder was a crime — and that he was ready to commit it anyway. He announced a $100,000 bounty, from his own personal money, for anyone who killed the maker of the film, who had been identified as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. He explicitly called on members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to take up what he termed a "noble deed," saying they too would be rewarded.

"I announce today that this blasphemer, this sinner who has spoken nonsense about the holy prophet, anyone who murders him, I will reward him with $100,000," Bilour said, adding that there was no other way to instill fear among blasphemers.

The reaction was swift. Pakistan's government and Bilour's own party — the secular Awami National Party, an ally of President Asif Ali Zardari's government — distanced themselves, with the Foreign Office calling the offer his personal view, not official policy. The U.S. State Department called it "inflammatory and inappropriate." Bilour did not care: days later he told NPR he stood by the bounty, made in his personal capacity, because the U.S. and Europe had not made any law prohibiting insults to prophets.

The Pakistani Taliban, meanwhile, embraced him. The episode captured the surreal edge of the 2012 crisis — a sitting minister of a sovereign state publicly soliciting al-Qaeda to commit a murder, on camera, on the record.