‘You come near Tahrir Square again and things won’t be so good’

Guardian reporters have hair-raising encounters with the Egyptian security forces and an angry mob The soldier appeared helpful at first, offering to walk us through to Cairo’s Tahrir Square as we attempted to cover the latest protests on what had been dubbed Mubarak’s “day of departure”. But it was not the square that we were being led to but the ministry of the interior. The next soldier, outside the ministry’s main door was not so friendly. He ordered us to kneel facing a wall with our hands behind our heads, an order that was quickly countermanded by another soldier. The soldiers were disciplined but firm, demanding to know who we were, querying a passport stamp for the Rafah border crossing into Gaza; others for Tunisia and Afghanistan. Soon there were more of us sitting with our backs against a wall: a freelance journalist from New Zealand, another Briton, a Dane and an Italian, and three students. Next came two officers in plain clothes, less friendly than the enlisted troops. “Israeli?” asked one of the plain clothes men. No, British, we replied. Our phones were taken despite our best efforts to hide them. The Dane’s bag was searched, as well as those belonging to the three students, who were French. The man who ordered us to kneel was sat by an armoured personnel carrier. With a flourish he took out five or six sets of handcuffs and racked them on a bar behind a metal shield. My colleague Jack Shenker’s packet of Strepsils attracted sudden suspicion. A soldier took them from my hand, demanding to know what they are. State television has been reporting that foreigners were directing the protests in Tahrir Square; that they have been handing out drugs to those occupying it and that the foreign press was telling lies. That is the background to our detention in a city fast descending into anarchy and mutual suspicion. It was also clear that the army had been given orders to harass us. What happened to this reporter and his colleague is far from unique. In the last few days, in what appears to be a co-ordinated campaign, journalists have been arrested, beaten, threatened, even stabbed. Cameras have been taken and broken, crews set upon, rooms and offices raided. Outside the interior ministry, the mood relaxed somewhat. Some of the young soldiers spoke English. We talked about football and the Hollywood star Russell Crowe. They gave us crisps and cigarettes, allowing us to stand one at a time to stretch. One of the soldiers warned us about the senior man in plain clothes, telling us that he’s “mad” and that we were unlucky to walk into the wrong checkpoint. “I’ll make a deal with you,” Ahmad, the “mad” officer said, after an hour and a half: “I’ll let you go but I’m afraid for you.” He repeated this several times. “You come near the square again things won’t be so good next time. Do you understand? Go far away from here.” A soldier walked us to the edge of their cordon and waved us out. It was then that our problems really began. Hailing a taxi, we were stopped immediately by an armed group. Two men jumped into the car. One took our passports while the other cradled a large machete. Behind us two men jumped up onto the bumper. Within minutes we were taken to another group of soldiers who released us after once again checking our documents. We tried again to head back to the hotel, but in the midst of a contested revolution this was no mean feat. The city reeked of paranoia and violence. Every hundred yards or so someone from the groups along the road – men with knives and scaffold poles – put their body in front of the car to stop us and demanded to see our passports. Another soldier prevented us reaching the hotel and sent us in another direction. We could see the building where we were staying close to Tahrir Square but suddenly we found ourselves among a crowd of Mubarak supporters. There was a tank 100m distant, but we were where the heaviest clashes of the day before took place, beneath a series of overlapping underpasses leading to the 6 October bridge. It remains perhaps the most dangerous spot in the city for foreign journalists. We reversed quickly, in the knowledge that these were the same groups who had been beating up reporters, and found ourselves immediately surrounded by a new crowd. The same barked questions were fired our way. By now we had decided to try an escape the city centre and head to another hotel in Zamalek, on the river’s other side. More men got into our car. They said they were leading us to the hotel but in Arabic we understood them to be saying they would take us to the army once again, this time to the defence ministry. We were questioned once more, this time by soldiers at the state-run TV station, getting more scared and frustrated in the knowledge that we were within a couple of hundred metres of our destination and relative safety. We were not there yet. Between us and the hotel, on the main roads lay pro-Mubarak crowds. An Egyptian journalist, being held along with his luggage, asked for an escort to the hotel. He was visibly as alarmed as we both felt. We asked the senior officer on the scene three times but he shrugged his shoulders and refused us. Instead a group of the neighbouring vigilantes walked us back down tiny, dirty back alleys guarded by young men with swords and knives and clubs, who upon seeing us accompanied by their neighbours smiled and welcomed us. We finally felt secure for the first time in several hours. Egypt Middle East Journalist safety Press freedom Newspapers & magazines Newspapers Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk

Posted by on February 4, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry