The children of deceased Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi are seeking €1 million in damages from the publisher of video game Call of Duty over its portrayal of their father as a 'halfwit who wants to kill everybody'.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which was released in 2012, 10 years after Savimbi's death, features the former leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) shouting 'fight, my brothers' and 'we must finish them... death to the MPLA'.
The lawyer for the family, Carole Engert, was reported by AFP as stating that Savimbi is portrayed as a “big halfwit who wants to kill everybody”, which she described as an “outrageous” image that does not reflect his personality as a “political leader and strategist.
“A warlord, yes, [but] he was an important person in the Cold War, he was a friend of [Nelson] Mandela,” she added.
Three of Savimbi’s children, who live in Paris, are now suing the French branch of the publisher Activision Blizzard.
But the games publisher reportedly claimed to have shown Savimbi as ‘a good guy’ and denied misrepresenting the rebel.
According to AFP, Etienne Kowalski, a lawyer for Activision Blizzard, said Savimbi was represented “for who he was... a character of Angolan history, a guerrilla chief who fought the MPLA.”
The company’s lawyer added that Savimbi was shown in a “rather favourable light” as a “good guy who comes to help the heroes”.
Call of Duty faced a similar complaint from Panama’s former dictator Manuel Noriega, who attempted to sue in the US, but the case was thrown out.
