Actor George Clooney, arrested Friday in Washington, D.C., during a protest at the Sudanese Embassy, has been released after paying a $100 fine.
Clooney and other protesters were charged with disorderly crossing of a police line as they were protesting the mounting humanitarian crisis in Sudan.
“I guess we’re not allowed to hang out at the Sudanese Embassy,” Clooney joked at a press conference after his release.
At the protest, Clooney called on 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.”
Clooney and his fellow protesters – including his father, Nick, Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, Virginia Rep. Jim Moran, NAACP President Ben Jealous and Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs – were held in the same cell, Clooney said.
“It was really rough, you can imagine,” he joked. “Have you ever been in a cell with these guys?”
In high spirits and still speaking passionately about the crisis in Darfour, Clooney said this was his first time being arrested.
“And let’s hope it’s my last,” he said.
