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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.
Medea Benjamin’s broken arm is an incident 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 appear elsewhere in Kiriakou’s account as allies in his own case and in the campaign for Julian Assange; here the organisation appears in its other capacity, as a group whose members are physically stopped from reaching Gaza.
Sourced from John Kiriakou's on-record public statements. See his profile for the full body of his interviews, podcast appearances, and short-form video.
