# Medea Benjamin's broken arm

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Medea Benjamin's broken arm," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/medea-benjamins-broken-arm/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of Egyptian authorities breaking the arm of the CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin while arresting her, as she attempted to reach the Rafah crossing to escort a food shipment into Gaza — an incident he offers as a measure of what Egyptian policing of the border looks like in practice.*

- **Subject:** Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK
- **Where:** Egypt, en route to the Rafah crossing
- **Purpose of the trip:** To escort a shipment of food into Gaza
- **Injury:** Arm broken during arrest
- **Told by:** John Kiriakou

**Medea Benjamin's broken arm** is an incident [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) volunteers as a concrete illustration of Egyptian conduct at the Gaza border, offered in response to a general account of surveillance and repression met by activists travelling through Egypt.

## The account

His interlocutor had described what participants in a march to Gaza the previous summer reported of Egyptian policing. Kiriakou answered with a case rather than an assessment: *"it was just a couple of years ago that media Benjamin went with a group from Code Pink. And the Egyptians literally broke her arm."*[1]

He underlines the disproportion by size. *"I mean, Medadia is a little tiny. I mean, maybe maybe she's 90 or 95 pounds"* — *"but they they physically broke her arm."*[1]

The circumstances of the arrest matter to the point he is making: it happened *"um arresting her just because she was trying to get to Rafa to uh escort a shipment of of food"* into Gaza.[2]

## What it is offered to show

Kiriakou raises the episode inside a longer argument about Egypt's double position on the Rafah crossing — a country whose people, on his reading, want the border open and whose government does not. His judgement of the government is unambiguous: *"I think that the Egyptian government wants it closed. And in that respect, they're they're partnered with the Israelis."*[3]

Benjamin and [CODEPINK](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/code-pink) appear elsewhere in Kiriakou's account as allies in his own case and in the campaign for [Julian Assange](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/julian-assange); here the organisation appears in its other capacity, as a group whose members are physically stopped from reaching Gaza.

## See also

- [Code Pink](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/code-pink)
- [The Palestinian middle class in the Gulf](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-palestinian-middle-class-in-the-gulf)
- [Qatari money in Egypt](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/qatari-money-in-egypt)

## Sources

1. Taxpayers Against Genocide w/ Seth Donnelly (2025-11-14), at 20:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHevWAzEsic&t=1256s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-14-the-deep-focus-show-taxpayers-against-genocide-w-seth-donnelly/
2. Taxpayers Against Genocide w/ Seth Donnelly (2025-11-14), at 21:26. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHevWAzEsic&t=1286s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-14-the-deep-focus-show-taxpayers-against-genocide-w-seth-donnelly/
3. Taxpayers Against Genocide w/ Seth Donnelly (2025-11-14), at 17:14. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHevWAzEsic&t=1034s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-14-the-deep-focus-show-taxpayers-against-genocide-w-seth-donnelly/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/medea-benjamins-broken-arm/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt