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A restraining order was issued against Britney Spears’ manager after he was accused of drugging her, parading her in front of the paparazzi and cutting her phone lines.
Osama Lutfi, 33, the pop star's sometime companion, guru and manager has been at Spears’s side throughout much of her well-documented public breakdown.
The singer was physically removed from her Los Angeles home last week and detained for psychiatric evaluation for the second time in a month after a series of hysterical episodes.
It emerged last night that Lynne Spears, the singer’s mother, told a Los Angeles court that Mr Lutfi “drugged Britney, he has cut Britney’s home phone lines and removed her cell phone chargers. He yells at her. He claims to control everything - Britney’s business manager, her attorneys and the security guards at the gate.”
After hearing her testimony, the Los Angeles Superior Court ordered Mr Lutfi, who is known as Sam, to cease all contact with the singer and her family. He must remain 250 yards away from the medical centre where Spears is being held, her home and the homes of her parents, siblings and children.
Today Mr Lufti gave an interview to Us magazine admitting he gave Spears medication, but he insisted it was to help her sleep. He described the pills as "magic" and said Spears agreed that they helped her.
He went on to claim Spears had been suffering from bipolar disorder for approximately five years.
"In the depressive episodes, it's all crying. But in the manic episode, there's very little crying or sympathy or compassion. She becomes another person. She becomes somebody that just doesn't care about anybody or anything," he said.
Spears's gradual demise has been closely followed by the world's media and by judges, who awarded custody of her two children to Kevin Federline, her ex-husband, last year.
Lynne Spears, who has had a strained relationship with her daughter, said that in October last year Mr Lutfi had “essentially moved into Britney’s home and has purported to take control of her life, home and finances”.
She described to the court a long chaotic night inside her daughter’s Beverley Hills home in the days before she was put on “mental health evaluation hold”.
Lynne Spears said there were a string of disagreements between her daughter and Mr Lutfi. “Sam had told Britney she was an unfit mother, a piece of trash and a whore, that she cares more about Adnan (Ghalib), her current boyfriend than she cares about her kids and that she does not deserve her kids,” she said.
To keep Britney quiet Mrs Spears claimed that her manager said he ground up drugs and put them in her food. “He told us that the doctor who is treating her now is trying to get her into a sleep-induced coma so that they could then give her drugs to heal her brain.”
Late that same evening, she said Britney decided she needed to go shopping for lipstick. Before they left the house, she said Mr Lutfi took Britney upstairs and gave her something “to make her more lighthearted, happy and fun.”
Throughout the evening Britney’s mother claims that paparazzi were present in the house and that they were being corralled by Mr Lutfi.
“The paparazzi reported to Sam and addressed him with great respect,” she said. “They treated him like a general.”
The graphic depiction of life inside Spears’ home will be amplified by a disturbing description of the Louisiana-born musician’s mental state in the next edition of an American music magazine.
Rolling Stone will publish an account of the singer verbally abusing a fan and breaking down in a shopping centre.
When her credit card failed to go through she is reported to have reacted furiously. “A wail emerges from the cubby — guttural, vile, the kind of base animalistic shriek only heard at a family member's deathbed. ‘F*** these bitches,’ screams Britney, each word ringing out between sobs. ‘These idiots can't do anything right!’” according to an excerpt from the forthcoming article.
Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote for Rolling Stone that after a crowd had gathered Spears was approached by a fan for a photograph: “’I don't want her talking to me!’ she screams. She whirls around and stares the girl deep in the eyes, her lips almost vibrating with anger. ‘I don't know who you think I am, bitch," she snarls, ‘but I'm not that person’”.
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