We’re used to hearing about celebrities who are arrested: Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton… but George Clooney?
He was arrested on Friday outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C., where he participated in a staged protest, hoping to shed light on the abuses of the Sudanese government and to pressure the country’s president into allowing humanitarian aid into beleaguered regions of the nation. He was later released from police custody that afternoon after paying a $100 fine.
“The goal for today is the same goal its been all along and will continue to be and not be accomplished today or anytime in the near future,” Clooney said to The Huffington Post. “But it’s a job that we have to continually do which is raise attention; protest the idea of a government attacking and killing its own innocent men, women and children and allowing aid to get in now because in the next few months it could be the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world and thats the important thing.”
Authorities cautioned the group three times not to cross a police line, but Clooney and the group did not heed the warnings. They also arrested Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), Rep. John Olver (D-Mass.), Rep. Al Green (D-Tx.) and Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), former Rep. Tom Andrews (D-Maine), NAACP president Ben Jealous, Martin Luther King III and actor Dick Gregory. Though they caused hysteria on social media, the arrests were not widely anticipated.
As he was being taken away Friday morning, USA Today reports that Clooney said, “This 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.”
Max Milien, spokesman for the Secret Service, told PEOPLE the actor was being cooperative. “He’s being charged currently with disorderly crossing of a police line, which is a misdemeanor and he will be transported to the second district of the Metropolitan Police Department for processing,” Milien said.