Peace activist says description in the film ruined his life

Dec 7, 2009 11:09 GMT  ·  By

Sacha Baron Cohen is known for the characters he creates, with whose help he then sets out to create films in the mockumentary genre, a genre he helped perfect, tackling current issues that are pending solution. Bruno is the latest, an Austrian fashionista who sets out to conquer America in the film with the same name, released this summer. Cohen and Universal Pictures are now named as defendants in a new £70 million suit, The Telegraph informs.

Because of the nature of the films he makes, which usually imply he goes undercover and pretends to shoot documentaries, the comedian is no stranger to lawsuits, as all his fans must already know by now. However, this more recent legal action against him is the first one to ask no less than half the film’s profit so far in damages, on the grounds that it was guilty of libel for portraying Palestinian Ayman Abu Aita as a terrorist.

“Ayman Abu Aita, a Palestinian grocer and activist from Bethlehem, claimed the film has ruined his life. In one of the scenes in Bruno, Cohen’s character claims he has travelled to the Ein El-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon to meet a leader of the Al-Aqsa Brigades. A caption describes Abu Aita as ‘Terrorist group leader, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.’ In fact, the scene was filmed at a well-known hotel on the outskirts of Bethlehem in the West Bank in an area under Israeli control, next to an Israeli army base,” The Telegraph says.

After release, Cohen even appeared on the David Letterman show, still in character as Bruno (which is yet another thing that the British actor is known to do), and claimed he had found the terrorist using CIA files. Abu Aita, a self-titled peace fighter, is now taking Sacha Baron Cohen, Universal Pictures and David Letterman himself to court over claims of libel. He says the film ruined his life altogether, having received numerous death threats and living in fear of his life ever since.

A spokesperson for Universal Pictures was not immediately available for comment at the time of writing, as neither was one for Sacha Baron Cohen. Nevertheless, as fans would know, this is not the first and will probably not be the last lawsuit for the film, albeit it is the more potentially costly.