George Clooney and Father Released After Arrests at Sudanese Embassy

George Clooney and his father were released from jail Friday after being arrested earlier in the day as they protested outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C.
The actor, who most recently starred in "The Descendants," described the incident as "my first arrest and let's hope it's my last." He told reporters following his release that he had paid a fine but did not specify the amount.

Clooney was arrested as he protested Sudan's blockade of food and aid. His father, Nick Clooney, Martin Luther King III, four Democratic members of the House of Representatives and NAACP President Ben Jealous were also among those arrested Friday.

"We had fun," the actor joked after his release. "We were all in a cell together. It was nice."
But he was deadly serious when he discussed the situation in Sudan, saying, "We are trying to bring attention to an ongoing emergency."
"Our job right now is to bring attention to it," he said. "One of those ways was apparently getting arrested. We hope that people understand that there really is a ticking clock on this and we really need to get moving."

Clooney and the other protesters assembled Friday morning outside the Sudanese Embassy, where they were warned three times not to cross a police line outside the building on Washington's Embassy Row.

When they refused to obey, they were placed in plastic handcuffs and put in the back of a US Secret Service van.
A Secret Service spokesman told FOX News Channel they were taken to the Metropolitan Police Second District for processing on charges of disorderly crossing of a police line.

Clooney, a longtime activist for human rights in Sudan, said before his arrest that he wanted to draw attention to the need for humanitarian aid there.
"We need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world -- immediately," Clooney said to cheering supporters, according to AFP.
"The second thing we are here to ask is a very simple thing -- it's for the government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children," Clooney said.

"Stop raping them, and stop starving them. That's all we ask."
The Enough Project, which organized the gathering, released a statement saying Clooney and the others were arrested for protesting "the escalating humanitarian emergency in Sudan that threatens the lives of 500,000 people."

Clooney's arrest came a day after he met with President Barack Obama at the White House about the ongoing crisis in Sudan

George Clooney ,Father Arrested in Protest at Sudanese Embassy

Hollywood movie star George Clooney has been arrested at Sudan's embassy in Washington at a protest about the escalating emergency in Sudan.

The Sudanese government has been blocking humanitarian aid from reaching a volatile border region where hundreds of thousands of people are short of food.

Clooney, his father Nick and other activists ignored three police warnings to leave the embassy grounds and were led away in plastic handcuffs to a waiting van by uniformed members of the Secret Service, a journalist covering the demonstration said.

"We need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," Clooney told reporters just before his arrest.

"The second thing we are here to ask is for the government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children. Stop raping them and stop starving them. That's all we ask."

Clooney, who on Wednesday was a guest at the White House banquet in honour of British prime minister David Cameron, posted bail with several others and walked free later on Friday.

"You never know if you are accomplishing anything ... We hope it helps," Clooney told reporters after his release, adding that the arrest was his first and "let's hope it's my last".

Activists have drawn parallels between the current crisis in Sudan's Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces with the violence almost a decade ago in the western region of Darfur, where Khartoum sparked international condemnation by violently suppressing a rebellion in a conflict that the United Nations estimates killed some 300,000 people.

The United States has voiced serious concerns about the deteriorating conditions in the border region, where Sudanese troops are fighting rebels aligned with its newly independent neighbour South Sudan.

Clooney, who recently visited the area, told a Senate hearing this week that Sudan's forces were launching repeated attacks on unarmed civilians and preventing aid from reaching a region where US officials say as many as 250,000 people face severe food shortages.

Clooney, a long-time celebrity activist critical of the Khartoum government, had been expected to provoke police into arresting him.

Protest organisers said that others arrested on Friday included several US congressmen, the son of slain US civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr, and veteran human rights campaigner John Prendergast, the co-founder of the Enough Project.