Clooney Buys Rights To Story Of bin Laden’s Driver: Seeks To Portray Hamdan As Victim
August 10, 2008
Hollywood A-lister George Clooney is planning to bring the story of Osama bin Laden’s driver to the big screen.
The actor’s production company, Smokehouse, has bought the rights to a book about Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, according to The Observer newspaper.
The Challenge by journalist Jonathan Mahler chronicles Hamdan’s capture and imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay and his subsequent trial, defended by a US navy lawyer, Lt.-Cmdr. Charles Swift.
Hamdan, from Yemen, was sentenced last week to 5 1/2 years in jail. It was the first sentence handed down to a Guantanamo Bay detainee by a U.S. military tribunal.
The trial was covered widely as military prosecutors had hoped it would showcase their success in the war on terror, claiming that Hamdan had knowledge of bin Laden’s terrorist plans.
In the end, Hamdan got a light sentence. His defenders painted him as a simple man who had taken the job in order to feed his family. A military jury cleared him of terrorist conspiracy charges but found him guilty of providing support to a terrorist.
The report says Clooney is interested in playing the role of Swift, who began his job defending Hamdan as a young, inexperienced military lawyer.
He took the case to the Supreme Court and won. Swift’s determination cost him his marriage and a promotion.
During Hamdan’s sentencing, he appealed to the court to let his client return to his family in Yemen: “The best chance for him to rehabilitate is to reunite with that family. He won’t put them at risk again.”
August 10, 2008 at 3:26 PM
I saw somewhere that today that Clooney is an unofficial advisor to Obama. He talks to him regularly about African and the Middle East.
August 10, 2008 at 5:21 PM
We are even over-lawyering our military issues now. If the trend continues all battlefield commanders will need a lawyer by their side before making any decision. And he had better be a lawyer approved by the liberals. No one like John Yoo need apply.
I’m sure LCDR Swift has a brilliant future with the ACLU.
August 11, 2008 at 9:56 AM
“The best chance for him to rehabilitate is to reunite with that family. He won’t put them at risk again.”
Forgetting that he is talking about the same types of people who kills daughters over any insult, real or imagined.
Typical Liberal pablem…’rehabilitation.’ You can’t ‘rehabilitate’ a cultural mindset instilled since birth.
As for Clooney, he’ll make the usual moonbat “proof Bush is a nazi” garbage that the rest of Hollywood’s Leftist make and it will be a miserable failure also.