Citizenfour director Laura Poitras suing US government over 'harassment'

  • 15/07/2015
Filmmaker Laura Poitras (Reuters)
Filmmaker Laura Poitras (Reuters)

The director behind controversial Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour is suing US government officials for harassment.

In a lawsuit filed in Washington DC by rights organisation Electronic Frontier Foundation, Laura Poitras claims she was subjected to six years of harassment, searches and seizures at US and foreign airports between 2006 and 2012.

She claims the ordeal began after she released the documentary My Country, My Country about the US occupation of Iraq and it continued until 2012, when she claims it stopped after journalist Glenn Greenwald detailed the harassment in an article for The Atlantic. Producers of the film also reportedly petitioned the Department of Homeland Security in protest of the extra scrutiny, according to TheWrap.com.

A statement from Poitras reads: "I'm filing this lawsuit because the government uses the US border to bypass the rule of law. This simply should not be tolerated in a democracy."

Poitras lists officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the lawsuit and is seeking records of the alleged harassment.

The director won an Oscar for Citizenfour - her study of exiled US national security whistleblower Edward Snowden - in 2015.

WENN.com