Medea Benjamin Booted Out of Egypt
By Matthew Vadum
Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, a frequent teller of tall tales, claims she was detained and physically abused Monday by Egyptian authorities when she flew into Cairo’s airport –on her way to an anti-Israel rally in Gaza.
Benjamin, who has close ties to the Obama White House, was traveling to Egypt for a meeting with international delegates before a scheduled trip to Gaza for what Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now” described innocuously as a “women’s conference.”
Hours later after being deported to Turkey, Benjamin said she had been held at the Cairo airport without explanation and violently handcuffed by Egyptian officials. While in Egyptian custody she took to Twitter to ask for help. She said officials in Cairo dislocated her shoulder and broke her arm before putting her on an airplane bound for somewhere in Turkey.
“I was brutally assaulted by Egyptian police, who never said what I was being accused of,” Benjamin said in a statement, according to CBS News. “When the authorities came into the cell to deport me, two men threw me to the ground, stomped on my back, pulled my shoulder out of its socket and handcuffed me so that my injured arm was twisted around and my wrists began to bleed. I was then forced to sit between the two men who attacked me on the plane ride from Cairo to Istanbul, and I was (and still am) in terrible pain the whole time.”
There appears to be no independent confirmation that Benjamin suffered bodily injury in Egypt.
