Glenn Greenwald Bound and Robbed at Gunpoint in Terrifying, Violent Home Invasion
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Journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed that he was robbed at gunpoint by a group of five men in a terrifying home invasion last month.
Greenwald told the story in an essay that addressed news of another home invasion in Oakland, in which a family was tied up, beaten, threatened with death, and robbed by a group of armed men.
He revealed that he faced a similar attack on March 5, at a house on a farm near Rio de Janeiro that his family has been renting during the pandemic. At the time of the invasion, Greenwald was at the farm, which he described as “isolated,” along with an off-duty cop hired to provide security. His family — a husband and two kids — was in Rio.
At around 9:30 p.m., Greenwald heard his dogs barking more than usual. When he went outside to see why, “three men wearing full black face masks descended on me, all pointing guns at me.”
The robbers pushed him into the house, where two other men had his security guard face-down on the floor at gunpoint.
The thieves demanded money, Greenwald said, and were angered to find that there wasn’t much, aside from “a couple hundred dollars, some kitchen appliances, and clothes for ourselves and our kids.”
“They did not believe that, which drove them to a considerable amount of anger,” he wrote.
“They repeatedly threatened to shoot the police officer in the head, repeatedly kicked him so hard that they cracked several of his ribs, ordered me to open my mouth, and stuck a gun in it as they demanded to know where the rest of the money was, smashed my phone and tablet against a wall when they could not figure out how to erase the hard-drive, and just generally tried to create a climate of extreme fear,” he wrote.
Greenwald said he and the security guard had their arms and legs bound with cords as the criminals ultimately fled in his car after an hour of ransacking the home.
The thieves, which Greenwald said struck him as “desperate” and “not professional criminals,” went on to commit “at least three other armed invasions of stores in the area using the car they stole from us.” Police spotted the car — registered to Greenwald’s husband, a member of Congress in Brazil — on security cameras, and soon uncovered the identity of the criminals.
