What began as a night out for a meal after two weeks of being “cooped up” in Cairo’s Intercontinental Hotel, ended as a nightmare for Fairfax’s Jason Koutsoukis and News Limited’s John Lyons.
Egypt has been wrenched asunder by the largest popular upheaval since the 1950s with hundreds of thousands of protesters seizing Tahir Square in reaction to the 30 year authoritarian rule of President Hosni Mubarak.
“There has been a curfew on every night and none of the restaurants have been open, even the Intercontinental’s restaurants have been closed,” Koutsoukis told Neos Kosmos from Cairo.
Last Sunday Koutsoukis, along with Lyons, sensed “things seemed to be opening up outside” so they ventured out in the hope of eating something better than the stale buffet on offer in their hotel.
Three German journalist friends of Koutsoukis invited them to dine at the nearby Marriot where they arrived easily and following dinner, at around 9:30pm, left to go home.
“John [Lyons] and I got in a taxi and we saw Thomas [his German journalist friend] and his girlfriend so we decided to give them a lift,” Koutsoukis said.
Little did they know that such an innocuous act would result in them spending a night blindfolded and handcuffed by the Egyptian military authorities.
“The taxi driver said it would be easier to take Thomas home first, rather than going to our hotel five minutes away,” Koutsoukis said. However, the taxi was stopped at one of the checkpoints where Vigilante groups have been policing Cairo over two weeks as the unpopular police have been stood in barracks.
“Vigilantes are simply people guarding their streets and houses – they stop traffic and demand to see passports, even though they have no right to,” Koutsoukis said, adding, “but they are armed with sticks and knives and it’s not prudent to refuse them.”
The army is out in force but has said it will not attack the people. A strange, (if not yet tense), standoff has been generated between protesters and the army.
Seeing four “foreigners in one taxi” raised suspicions for the vigilantes.
“They gave our passports to the military who were 15 metres behind us, and they took time checking our passports, then they went into a police station,” Koutsoukis said.
Koutsoukis began to fear the worst as the Egyptian police are notorious for their brutality. Worse, there have been attacks on foreign and local journalists by Mubarak supporters, many of them plain clothed policemen.
The military personnel “decided to take us to a local military command post in” Koutsoukis, said, adding “they were polite, but you could tell they were not going to let us go”.
Koutsoukis and his colleagues were moved to a military intelligence facility.
“They blindfolded us so we would not know where we were heading and tied our hands,” he said. “They were saying ‘don’t worry all will be okay’ in hindsight they were honest, but at the time it was difficult to judge.”
The Fairfax journalist’s greatest fear was the possibility that they may be taken to the Interior Ministry’s police headquarters, “around the corner”.
“The Egyptian police do not hide the fact that they torture, it’s part of their standard procedure,” Kotsouris emphasised.
Alas, they drove for over half an hour to somewhere else. “They did not take the blindfolds off and left us sitting there for a long time,” Koutsouris said. “They kept asking; ‘Where are you from? What do you do for a living? Where have you been? Why are you out after curfew? And do you know it’s dangerous in the streets of Cairo?'”
The military wanted to find out if they had taken any photos of the demonstrations. “They confiscated our phones, but I had downloaded my iPhone photos onto my laptop before,” Koutsoukis said.
After the interrogation the journalists were taken back where “half way into Cairo they took our blindfolds off, untied our hands and we were home by 2am,” a relieved Koutsoukis said.
The outcome of Egypt’s popular uprising is difficult to gauge according to Koutsoukis. “Sometimes it feels like it’s losing steam and yet on Tuesday it was the biggest protest we had seen – half a million people in Tahir Square.”
The protest cut across all of Egypt’s classes with poor people; middle class people; movie stars; and even Egypt’s elites among the protesters, according to Koutsoukis.
In Egypt with a population of 80.5 million it is “difficult to know what most people think,” Koutsoukis said.
Yet, even in Hosni Mubarak’s home town where one would suspect that most rural people would be conservative and “100 percent behind Mubarak”, Koutsoukis found them divided.
“There seems to be a significant ground swell against Mubarak in all of Egypt,” he said.
Koutsoukis is less concerned than many in Israel and the West that The Muslim Brotherhood will take over if a power vacuum is created by Mubarak’s possible resignation.
“I have interviewed people from the Muslim Brotherhood and they do not strike me as extremists intent on gaining control,” he said. Yet tegardless of how well organised the Brotherhood are “they are not that popular securing 20 percent of the vote,” Koutsoukis said.
He negated reports that the Muslim Brotherhood have taken an active role in the protests. “It’s mainly secular protesters. It’s important for people to know that while 85 per cent of people may be Muslim, no one takes Islam that seriously here; everyone drinks and has a secular perspective.”
Koutsoukis rejects the argument that Mubarak should stay in order to safeguard peace and stability in the region. “People should not be arguing that 80 million people should not have democracy, there should be a movement to democracy across all the Middle East”.
The current danger is real, especially for journalists. The Mubarak leadership exulted its supporters to attack foreign journalists. “I have not seen journalists getting beaten up but have heard many stories about it and I’ve seen journalists dragged off and being put in the back of police vans,” Koutsoukis said.
One of the most menacing and contested segments of Egyptian society are the plain clothes police. “There are thousands of them” Koutsoukis said, and “people will always talk about their fear of these security forces.”