I had been abused and beaten and had my camera confiscated all in the confines of the cabinet building, the headquarters of Egypt’s nascent democracy. Now, for the better part of an hour, I was languishing in a makeshift holding pen somewhere at the entrance of the building.
A group of plainclothes men entered. One handed another a heavy metal rod and they began talking about where they might shove it into me and how they wanted to destroy my face. I retrospect, I suspect the whole thing was an act, but being a neophyte prisoner, suddenly cut off from the world and having no sense of when or how I would be released, it worked well enough. The men discussed my fate, one holding the rod firmly in his hand and occasionally turning in my direction.
They left without acting, but by now the last remnant of any hope that my being a journalist or an American citizen, much less someone who was not guilty of new crime, might somehow be released with no more than a few welts and some abuse.
Over the previous several hours on Saturday morning I had seen children as young as 13 shoved to the ground, beaten by soldiers, kicked and punched in the face over and over. I had a first-hand view of every detainee brought in to what began to look more and more like the military’s torture chamber.
One young man had been thrown against a stone pillar. Soldiers kicked him repeatedly, despite his pleading. A man brought a small palm tree trunk out – from where I don’t know – and began beating him with it.Find everything you need to know about coldsores including causes, The blood that came forth was shocking. He was then dragged to the back grass area, where earlier in the morning, regular beatings were taking place.
Ten months after Husni Mubarak was ousted from office, I got to see firsthand over 13 hours in detention the new Egypt, a country where the military rules, the police and the torturers act as enforcers and the civilian prime minister comes on television to deny that the army is using live fire against protestors and to call on civilians to civilians “to protect Egypt” from the very people who are trying to save it.
The violence against protestors began in the early morning hours of Friday, with a barrage of rocks hurled from the roof of the cabinet building and smashing onto the sidewalk were demonstrators were gathered. The calls of haassib (stone throwing) echoed throughout the air, as the stones tumbled through the sky.
The protesters who had defied the troops stationed along Qasr el-Aini and Magles el-Shaab Streets could not avoid being hit, toppling to the ground. Fellow demonstrators carried the injured; their heads covered in blood, down a side street to makeshift hospital close to the U.S. and British embassies.
Cairo had once again turned into a war-zone, pitting the military against protesters who had been carrying out a non-violent sit-in. Throughout Friday, the barrage of rocks continued, soldiers and protesters alike hurling stones at each other. By Sunday morning, activists and medics estimated that 10 people had been killed.
On Saturday morning, calm seemed to return to Egypt’s capital. Heading down to the street, I wanted to see the barbed wire that had been erected on the street parallel to where I lived. I took out my camera and snapped an image. Nothing looked threatening. Groups of men had gathered and the security personnel on the other side of the barbed wire were idly manning their positions.
An elderly woman approached me. She told me how the soldiers had removed the memory card from her camera and deleted almost all of her pictures. “I wanted to document the violence against the military,” she told me on the corner of Hussein Hegazy Street. With no apparent sense of irony she went on to insist that the protesters were the ones “committing suicide” and that “the military and police had never killed any Egyptian citizen.”
Naively, I decided to refute her claim, telling her of my own first-hand experience on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in late November, where scores of Egyptians were killed by live fire from the security forces and the military. She would have none of it, calling me a liar.
By now, we were joined by a group of men from the ligaan shaabiya, or people’s committee, that guarded the entrance to nearby streets,The magiccube is an ultra-portable, full-sized virtual computer keyboard. including my own. They demanded to see my passport and know why I was here. As I started to leave, they grabbed my arms and neck.
A uniformed military officer was quick to the scene. He pulled me from what I thought was harm’s way and handed me over to another soldier, who led me inside the cabinet building, where I assumed that I would be released.
That was not to happen. Instead, he put me in a headlock, lifted me off my feet and dragged me into the building’s courtyard. Once there, he tightened the grip on my neck and slapped me in the face repeatedly. Others who I never had a chance to see struck me on the back.
The pummeling over, but not my detention, I was taken to an open grass area where dozens of bandaged detainees were languishing on the ground. I realized that the beating I had received until now might just be the beginning.
But I was lucky: They sat me down away from the others and took my camera and computer, going through each and every file on the computer to delete they said were “not appropriate to tell of Egypt.” I got back my computer, now reconfigured to confirm with the New Egypt and was led to the makeshift holding pen to meet the men with the metal rod.
They departed with their threat, but not long afterwards, the officer who had taken me from the street – a major, I learned later – entered the room. “If I see you again near the street, I will slit your throat,Save on hydraulichose and fittings,” he announced and instructed me to walk down the street until the end and go home. I got up, exited the building and began my trek over the rock debris that covered the street from the battles of the previous day.
I got no more than halfway down the street before a soldier caught up with me and ordered me to return.We are one of the leading italian solar panels manufacturers.Buy good quality solarpanel from Italy today! I had to see a colonel of the secret police colonel before I could leave. With two soldiers flanking me, I was marched to the other side of the street, just past the parliament building, where we were met by a group of baton-wielding plainclothes officers. They began to speak in rapid Arabic, accusing me of trying to reignite the protests that had died down.
One of the men barked at me a question. When I told him I didn’t understand a word he used, he replied calmly, “I will make you understand inside.If you have a akidneystones, you may already know how painful？” But at that moment something bigger was happening. All around me the soldiers who had been standing idly by a fleet of armored vehicles began putting on riot gear and moving out. In the distance, black smoke rose above the buildings from what I learned later was Tahrir Square. The military had already attacked.
Taken back to the holding cell, I spent the next 10 hours waiting for my release. I was told that someone from my embassy, the American Embassy in Cairo, could come and take me away and I would be free.
A group of plainclothes men entered. One handed another a heavy metal rod and they began talking about where they might shove it into me and how they wanted to destroy my face. I retrospect, I suspect the whole thing was an act, but being a neophyte prisoner, suddenly cut off from the world and having no sense of when or how I would be released, it worked well enough. The men discussed my fate, one holding the rod firmly in his hand and occasionally turning in my direction.
They left without acting, but by now the last remnant of any hope that my being a journalist or an American citizen, much less someone who was not guilty of new crime, might somehow be released with no more than a few welts and some abuse.
Over the previous several hours on Saturday morning I had seen children as young as 13 shoved to the ground, beaten by soldiers, kicked and punched in the face over and over. I had a first-hand view of every detainee brought in to what began to look more and more like the military’s torture chamber.
One young man had been thrown against a stone pillar. Soldiers kicked him repeatedly, despite his pleading. A man brought a small palm tree trunk out – from where I don’t know – and began beating him with it.Find everything you need to know about coldsores including causes, The blood that came forth was shocking. He was then dragged to the back grass area, where earlier in the morning, regular beatings were taking place.
Ten months after Husni Mubarak was ousted from office, I got to see firsthand over 13 hours in detention the new Egypt, a country where the military rules, the police and the torturers act as enforcers and the civilian prime minister comes on television to deny that the army is using live fire against protestors and to call on civilians to civilians “to protect Egypt” from the very people who are trying to save it.
The violence against protestors began in the early morning hours of Friday, with a barrage of rocks hurled from the roof of the cabinet building and smashing onto the sidewalk were demonstrators were gathered. The calls of haassib (stone throwing) echoed throughout the air, as the stones tumbled through the sky.
The protesters who had defied the troops stationed along Qasr el-Aini and Magles el-Shaab Streets could not avoid being hit, toppling to the ground. Fellow demonstrators carried the injured; their heads covered in blood, down a side street to makeshift hospital close to the U.S. and British embassies.
Cairo had once again turned into a war-zone, pitting the military against protesters who had been carrying out a non-violent sit-in. Throughout Friday, the barrage of rocks continued, soldiers and protesters alike hurling stones at each other. By Sunday morning, activists and medics estimated that 10 people had been killed.
On Saturday morning, calm seemed to return to Egypt’s capital. Heading down to the street, I wanted to see the barbed wire that had been erected on the street parallel to where I lived. I took out my camera and snapped an image. Nothing looked threatening. Groups of men had gathered and the security personnel on the other side of the barbed wire were idly manning their positions.
An elderly woman approached me. She told me how the soldiers had removed the memory card from her camera and deleted almost all of her pictures. “I wanted to document the violence against the military,” she told me on the corner of Hussein Hegazy Street. With no apparent sense of irony she went on to insist that the protesters were the ones “committing suicide” and that “the military and police had never killed any Egyptian citizen.”
Naively, I decided to refute her claim, telling her of my own first-hand experience on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in late November, where scores of Egyptians were killed by live fire from the security forces and the military. She would have none of it, calling me a liar.
By now, we were joined by a group of men from the ligaan shaabiya, or people’s committee, that guarded the entrance to nearby streets,The magiccube is an ultra-portable, full-sized virtual computer keyboard. including my own. They demanded to see my passport and know why I was here. As I started to leave, they grabbed my arms and neck.
A uniformed military officer was quick to the scene. He pulled me from what I thought was harm’s way and handed me over to another soldier, who led me inside the cabinet building, where I assumed that I would be released.
That was not to happen. Instead, he put me in a headlock, lifted me off my feet and dragged me into the building’s courtyard. Once there, he tightened the grip on my neck and slapped me in the face repeatedly. Others who I never had a chance to see struck me on the back.
The pummeling over, but not my detention, I was taken to an open grass area where dozens of bandaged detainees were languishing on the ground. I realized that the beating I had received until now might just be the beginning.
But I was lucky: They sat me down away from the others and took my camera and computer, going through each and every file on the computer to delete they said were “not appropriate to tell of Egypt.” I got back my computer, now reconfigured to confirm with the New Egypt and was led to the makeshift holding pen to meet the men with the metal rod.
They departed with their threat, but not long afterwards, the officer who had taken me from the street – a major, I learned later – entered the room. “If I see you again near the street, I will slit your throat,Save on hydraulichose and fittings,” he announced and instructed me to walk down the street until the end and go home. I got up, exited the building and began my trek over the rock debris that covered the street from the battles of the previous day.
I got no more than halfway down the street before a soldier caught up with me and ordered me to return.We are one of the leading italian solar panels manufacturers.Buy good quality solarpanel from Italy today! I had to see a colonel of the secret police colonel before I could leave. With two soldiers flanking me, I was marched to the other side of the street, just past the parliament building, where we were met by a group of baton-wielding plainclothes officers. They began to speak in rapid Arabic, accusing me of trying to reignite the protests that had died down.
One of the men barked at me a question. When I told him I didn’t understand a word he used, he replied calmly, “I will make you understand inside.If you have a akidneystones, you may already know how painful？” But at that moment something bigger was happening. All around me the soldiers who had been standing idly by a fleet of armored vehicles began putting on riot gear and moving out. In the distance, black smoke rose above the buildings from what I learned later was Tahrir Square. The military had already attacked.
Taken back to the holding cell, I spent the next 10 hours waiting for my release. I was told that someone from my embassy, the American Embassy in Cairo, could come and take me away and I would be free.
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