U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attends media after talks on the situation in Ukraine in Geneva April 17, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse (SWITZERLAND - Tags: POLITICS HEADSHOT) - RTR3LPU5

While many might have been surprised with the wedding news of Hollywood’s renowned bachelor George Clooney to the Lebanese-British shrewd and elegant barrister Amal Alamuddin, the same cannot be said about Clooney’s future mother-in-law Bariaa Alamuddin.

Confident, warm, and very well connected, that’s how those who know Bariaa Miknas well, describe her. Her journey was no walk in the park, growing up in Tripoli, before moving to Beirut to pursue her journalism career with Dar Sayyad in the sixties then with the Lebanese national TV. She later married Ramzi Alamuddin, and the couple escaped war-ravaged Lebanon to London, where Bariaa joined Al-Hayat newspaper and raised her two daughters Amal and Tala.

Bariaa is, well, Akram’s sister. That’s the connection, then.

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