Amal Clooney

Amal Alamuddin was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1978. Her father is Druze Lebanese, and her mother is a Sunni Muslim from Lebanon. When she was two years old, Amal’s family left Lebanon to escape the Lebanese Civil War and arrived in the United Kingdom,

Her father Ramzi Alamuddin is of the Alam al-Din dynasty and is from Baakleen in the Chouf District. Her mother, Baria (née Miknass), Sunni father is from Tripoli in the North Governorate. She was a political journalist and foreign editor of the Saudi-run newspaper al-Hayat. She is a founder of the public relations company International Communication Experts, which is part of a larger company specializing in celebrity guest bookings, publicity photography, and event promotion.

Amal Alamuddin was married to American actor George Clooney.

Case against Israel

Amal is qualified to practice law in the United States, England, and Wales. She was admitted to the bar in New York in 2002 and called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2010. She has also practiced at international courts in The Hague, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. She worked at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City for three years as part of the Criminal Defense and Investigations Group, where her clients included Enron and Arthur Andersen.

In 2024, she served on an advisory panel that reviewed the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s investigation into potential war crimes committed in the Israel–Hamas war. The panel was convened by the ICC prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan KC. 

Clooney and seven other legal and academic experts, including Renowned human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, reviewed the case and publicly backed the ICC prosecutor’s actions. Convened at the request of Karim Khan, the panel was tasked with evaluating the evidence for these arrest warrants. The panel includes prominent figures such as Judge Theodor Meron, Lord Justice Fulford, Danny Friedman KC, Baroness Helena Kennedy, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst.

They unanimously recommended that an application be made for arrest warrants against the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, two other Hamas leaders, and the Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant. In a statement, Clooney said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that all five individuals committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Amal Clooney is the co-founder and co-president of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she co-founded with her husband, George Clooney, in 2016.