Three British bodyguards working for Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie were arrested in Mumbai on Friday after parents accused them of physically mistreating children and women and making racial slurs outside a local school. The men, Thomas Matadam (47), Robert Patrick Dunn (35), and Michael John Brert (50), were taken into custody at the Taj Mahal Hotel and appeared before a metropolitan magistrate, who granted each bail of roughly 550 dollars and ordered them to check in daily at a nearby police station for seven days.
The incident occurred Thursday during filming of "A Mighty Heart" at the Anjuman-E-Islam school, part of which had been dressed to look like a Pakistani police station. As students tried to leave at the end of the day, bodyguards reportedly blocked their exit. Parents waiting outside said the guards abused children and women and made remarks including, "You bloody Indian."
Producers attributed the confrontation to paparazzi crowding the school entrance. Jolie plays Mariane Pearl in the film, which centers on Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002 while reporting on Islamist militants following the September 11 attacks.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in November 2006, in its own words.