Before their arrest on Friday, George Clooney and his father Nick spoke to the assembled crowd outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington.

"We're here really to ask two very simple questions. The first question is something immediate, and immediately we need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," the actor said.

He continued: "The second thing we are here to ask is for the government in Khartoum to stop killing its own innocent men, women and children. Stop raping them and stop starving them, that's all we ask."

"If we are who we always said we are, as Americans, we should be standing here together. There are people who in danger now. We will stand with them as long as they are in danger. My son and I stand with the Sudanese," added his father Nick.

The actor is campaigning to draw attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in southern Sudan.