George Clooney Arrested During Protest At Sudanese Embassy [Video]

Earlier this week, George Clooney testified before congress about the “campaign of murder” in Sudan. Clooney said that he wanted to draw attention to the issue. Well, the academy award winning actor, his father, and several other protesters did just that today when they were arrested outside of the Sudanese embassy in Washington D.C.

The Washington Post reports that Clooney and several other activists (including his father Nick Clooney and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia) were taken away in handcuffs this morning. The post reports that the protesters received three verbal warnings before officers decided to start making arrests.

CBS reports that Clooney and other activists gathered outside the Sudanese embassy to protest Obar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, for blocking food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains. Clooney said that the group was protesting to tell “the (Sudanese) government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children. Stop raping them, and stop starving them.”

Clooney accused the president of starving the Sudanese people and said that if action isn’t taken in the “we’re going to have a real humanitarian disaster.”

During his testimony earlier this week, Clooney said:

“They’re all charged with war crimes… and are now proving themselves to be the greatest war criminals of this century by far. It is a campaign of murder and fear and displacement and starvation.”

MSNBC reports that Martin Luther King III, NAACP President Ben Jealous, Rep Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and former Rep. Tom Andrews (D-Mass.) were all arrested during the protest.

Here’s a video from the protest.

[Photo: @selmatj]