Gaza Freedom March: detained at the US embassy
Ali Abunimah writing from Cairo, Live from Palestine, 7 January 2010
Medea Benjamin (left) and Kit Kettredge outside the US embassy.
Egyptian police in uniform and plain clothes surrounded US citizens attempting to visit the US embassy. On the afternoon of 28 December 2009, I was with several persons who accompanied CODEPINK cofounder Jodie Evans to the US Embassy in Cairo to present a letter from Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in which he expressed "strong support" for citizens of his state who were traveling to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and requesting they be given "every courtesy." In fact, we were turned away at the first checkpoint at a side street off Corniche al-Nil leading up to the embassy, and told to come back the next morning.
At 9:45am on 29 December, Evans, myself and two other Gaza Freedom March participants came back to the embassy. We explained that we wished to see Ambassdor Margaret Scobey to discuss why Egypt had prohibited more than 1,300 persons including hundreds of Americans, from going to Gaza to take part in a peaceful march with Palestinian civil society against the siege of Gaza.
My account of the "siege" at the US embassy during the Gaza Freedom March