George Clooney, already one of Hollywood's leading liberal voices, has embarked on what may be one of his most controversial projects: the story of Osama bin Laden's driver.
Clooney's production company, Smokehouse, has bought the rights to a book about Salim Hamdan, an inmate at Guantánamo Bay who last week was sentenced to jail for his role in helping the al-Qaeda leader. The book, The Challenge, is by journalist Jonathan Mahler and tells the story of Hamdan's capture and trial, defended by a US navy lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift. It has had a big critical success.
Last week Yemen-born Hamdan, who has already spent seven years in US custody, received a surprisingly light sentence of just five and a half years for being bin Laden's driver in Afghanistan. Prosecutors had billed the case as a key plank in the 'War on Terror', designed to show that terrorists could be dealt with by Guantánamo. They had described Hamdan as a member of bin Laden's inner circle who had knowledge of his terrorist plans.
Defence lawyers, however, portrayed him as a simple man who had taken a high-paying job in order to feed his family. A military jury seemed to agree with that assessment, clearing him of terrorist conspiracy charges, but finding him guilty of providing support to a terrorist.
The case became a cause célèbre on both sides of America's political divide. Supporters saw it as a chance to show Guantánamo was effectively and fairly dealing with terrorists. Critics, meanwhile, saw it as an abusive system that was using low-level prisoners as scapegoats.
Clooney is believed to be interested in playing the role of lawyer Swift and the case certainly has all the drama and tension of any fictional legal thriller. Aside from the terrorism and exotic locations, The Challenge describes Swift's battle as a classic case of a crusading 'little guy' winning against the odds. When he was first assigned Hamdan's case Swift was a relatively inexperienced, young military lawyer. Few expected him to mount much of a defence. But he led a team that took Hamdan's case to the Supreme Court and won. However, his work was not without cost, as he pushed the case so hard it cost him his marriage and saw him passed over for promotion.
But Swift did not stop. Last week, during Hamdan's sentencing, he appealed to the court to let him go back to his family in Yemen: something now seen as a possibility given the length of time he has served. 'The best chance for him to rehabilitate is to reunite with that family. He won't put them at risk again,' Swift said. In an ending that seems written for a movie, the military judge in the trial, Captain Keith Allred, even said in court that he hoped Hamdan would see his family soon.