Amal Clooney, wife of actor George Clooney, a human rights lawyer nearly caused an international incident with her bad behavior during her meeting with the Iraqi Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim at the Iraqi UN Mission in Manhattan.
The New York Post reported that Ms. Clooney “lectured the ambassador on ISIS and showed up with an unauthorized camera crew” after she originally requested to meet with the Iraqi Prime Minister al-Abadi during the UN General Assembly only to find her request quickly rejected. She was then offered to meet with UN Ambassador Alhakim and two Iraqi officials.
An official traveling with Ambassador Alhakim noted that on September 15, Ms. Clooney arrived to the meeting with Yazidi refugee and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nadia Murad and almost immediately engaged in a condescending, lecturing tone with the ambassador while discussing how to bring captured Islamic State (ISIS) militants to justice.
The official also noted that when the subject of the Yazidi people came up, Ms. Clooney gave the impression that they were the only religious sect in Iraq being slaughtered by ISIS and when the ambassador and his staff tried to explain the bigger picture by illustrating all the religious groups targeted by ISIS, she became
“[C]ompletely uninterested [and] tone deaf to the whole thing. It was highly offensive. I have had cousins decapitated.”
Ambassador Alhakim, who had 65 of his own family members exterminated by Saddam Hussein’s ruthless regime, became infuriated with Clooney and, at one point, stated to her,
“This is highly insulting. This is very unacceptable.”
Ms. Clooney’s rude behavior during the meeting wasn’t completely addressed to her by the Iraqi diplomats out of respect for Nadia and all that she had went through and when the meeting ended, Ms. Clooney had an unannounced ‘media team’ ready to ambush the Iraqi delegation, which violated standard operating procedures of requiring pre-approval by the Mission of Iraq.
Ms. Clooney requested an on-camera interview with the ambassador and was quickly shut down only to be promptly escorted outside along with her ‘media team’ and posse in tow.
The official said,
“The main issue is what she did and how she did it is absolutely outrageous and using a victim of war crimes as an accessory and political currency. That makes my blood boil.”
[revad2]
