KEY POINTS:
He boasts of being Barack Obama's "Blackberry buddy", never mind a United Nations Commissioner for Peace and a driving force behind the Save Darfur campaign.
But in the latest incarnation of his political instincts, Hollywood actor George Clooney may be gnawing at a raw nerve.
The star of such overtly political films as Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck has bought the rights to a film chronicling the life and trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Yemeni-born driver and bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, sentenced last week to 5 1/2 years' imprisonment for supporting terror.
The Challenge, a book by American journalist Jonathan Mahler documenting the long campaign by United States Navy lawyer Charles Swift and Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal to ensure a fair trial for Hamdan, will be adapted for the big screen.
Clooney paid an undisclosed sum, probably more than seven figures, on behalf of Smoke House, the production company he founded with his business partner, actor and film producer Grant Heslov.
Mahler said that he was "really excited", adding: "George Clooney is clearly an outstanding film-maker and I've got no doubt he's going to do a fantastic job with this."
Hamdan's sentence was the first delivered in a full war crimes tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, the American prison in Cuba.
Supporters of Washington's "war on terror" considered the 5 1/2year jail term too lenient; human rights activists protested that he had served his time - he had already spent seven years in US custody.
American gossip columns are buzzing with rumours that Clooney - whose performance as the brooding hero of legal thriller Michael Clayton earned him an Oscar nomination last year - will play Swift himself. Should he choose to do so at such a politically loaded time, Clooney could be making the most overtly political intervention of his career.
"I think Swift has taken a lot of people by surprise," Mahler said. "He had been a minor lawyer defending wayward service personnel on things like child molestation charges. Suddenly he's appointed by the Pentagon to defend an enemy combatant, and he ends up suing George W. Bush. It's difficult not to be impressed by his sense of duty, by the idea that justice transcends the allegiances of war.
"I'm sure that's part of the appeal for George Clooney."
Mahler said the story fascinated him because Hamdan, 40, and Swift "had this extraordinary relationship ... Suddenly a man in a military uniform walks into his room one day and says 'Hi, I'm Charlie Swift. I'm your lawyer. You can trust me.'
"Hamdan would go on hunger strike after hunger strike, and here was this man ... literally trying to feed him and stop him from going mad. Several times Hamdan tried to sack the man who wanted to save him, but Swift refused to budge."
- INDEPENDENT
