Egypt Deports Medea Benjamin

After spending one night in Cairo Airport’s detention cell, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin was deported to Turkey on Tuesday where she is hospitalized in Istanbul. Benjamin claims in a tweet early Tuesday that Egyptian authorities “broke” her arm during her detainment. She later said in a press release:

 “I was brutally assaulted by Egyptian police, who never said what I was being accused of. 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.”

Benjamin is expected to return to the U.S. on Wednesday. Although Benjamin was barred from Gaza, her organization, is sending two DC interns to the Hamas controlled area. Code Pink, a radical left wing pro-Hamas organization, was on its way to Gaza when it was stopped by Egyptian authorities at Cairo airport.