George Clooney Released After D.C. Arrest
The Hollywood actor and his father were protesting Sudan's handling of a growing humanitarian crisis.
| Posted Friday, March 16, 2012, at 2:54 PM
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
UPDATE: George Clooney and the other protesters arrested Friday morning outside of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. were released the same afternoon, NBC News reports.
"You never know if you are accomplishing anything," the actor told reporters after being released. "We hope it helps."
Friday, March 16: George Clooney and his father were reportedly arrested while protesting outside of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. on Friday morning.
The Washington Post explains that the Oscar-winning actor and several other protesters were given repeated warnings by police officers and knew that they'd be arrested for standing on embassy property.
Clooney and his fellow protesters have accused Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, of blocking humanitarian aid from entering areas close to the South Sudan border, and also blame the Sudanese government for violence in the region, according to the Associated Press.
The actor and his father, Nick, were joined by a handful of other high-profile protesters, including Democratic Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia and NAACP president Ben Jealous, who were also arrested. The men were handcuffed and put into a U.S. Secret Service van, according to the AP.
Clooney met with President Obama to discuss Sudan on Thursday, and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on violence in the Nuba mountains border region earlier this week, CNN reports.
Earlier this week, Clooney teamed with the anti-genocide group the Enough Project to release a four-minute video documenting the effects of violence in the Nuba Mountains and arguing that a campaign of ethnic cleansing is being carried out in the region.
For more on Clooney's campaign to provide aid to the region's residents, you can check out Clooney's Wednesday interview with PBS Newshour.
