Share this Twitter Myspace Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Slashdot Furl Yahoo Technorati Newsvine Facebook Export PDF Print E-mail Tags clooney humanitarian ” embassy arrested men president police crisis group stop sudan aid told arrest jealous “we sun fine result

BY DANIEL REYES

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

George Clooney may have a thing or two to teach troubled stars like Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen.

The Oscar-winning celebrity, and political activist, was arrested outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. with eight others including his father, journalist Nick Clooney, 78, while protesting according to Reuters via the Orlando Sentinel.

The group was protesting a growing humanitarian crisis in the country, and the president’s alleged blockade of humanitarian relief.

Just before his arrest, Clooney told reporters that “we need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the [sic] Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

Also arrested was NAACP president Ben Jealous, two Democratic members of Congress- Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern and Virginia Rep. Jim Moran- Jewish Council for Public Affairs President Rabbi Steve Gutow and Martin Luther King III.

The Vancouver Sun reports that the men, who were arrested by the Secret Service, were charged with disorderly crossing of a police line, which would result in a small fine if convicted.

The group was taken to the Metropolitan Police Department’s 2nd District for processing and were held in the same cell.

ABC News also reports that the group was charged with civil disobidence.

According to Entertainment Today, Clooney and colleagues knew that refusing to move would result in arrest, as the embassy is private property. The men were warned three times before the police made the arrests.

“We are here to show President Bashir that this is what the end looks like,” Jealous told an NBC reporter.

In a video posted on MSNBC via the Vancouver Sun, Clooney said he came to the embassy to ask “the government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children, stop raping them, stop starving them."

After he was released a few hours later, Clooney is quoted as joking that “It [the brief incarceration] was rough, you can imagine.”

“There really is a ticking clock on [the Sudanese humanitarian crisis,” he said, adding that he hoped that food and aid would come to the disenfranchised people of Sudan before the rainy season began.