Patrick and I were driving around the city and we went through a couple of sort of these vigilante neighbourhood checkpoints, which have become more and more aggressive over the last few days. We felt, though, that it was relatively safe to travel around. Life appeared to be returning somewhat to normal around the city. The markets were open.
As we were entering the downtown area from the area of Shubra, there was a group of about, I’d say, 10 very heavyset plainclothes people. We thought it was another vigilante group. They asked our driver for his identification, and demanded it. They then asked Patrick for his passport, demanded it. Passed it over. They asked if we were journalists. We told them that we were journalists. And they looked in my passport and they saw my visas to Afghanistan, Saudi, Yemen, you name it basically. So we couldn’t really hide the fact that we were journalists. And at that point, we knew that we weren’t just talking to one of these regular neighbourhood checkpoints. This was something different. They did not identify themselves as police, they didn’t identify themselves as anyone. And then they took our passports away, they took our driver Adel’s passport away. They then gave the passports to another man who was standing off to the side, plainclothes. He got into our car, into the passenger side. He forced our driver [Adel], directed him to drive us about … three blocks, a kilometre, I would say, away. That’s when I was tweeting, I was tweeting in the backseat and Patrick was asking for our passports back. He refused to give them to us.
After he got into our car, basically commandeered our car, he forced Adel to drive us to an area … it’s part of the downtown. We’re close to a Coptic church. We were taken out of our car. They asked us for our cellphones. We were forced to give them our cellphones. They searched our bags. They didn’t frisk us personally and they asked us to sit on the curb. Now, when we arrived there was about 20 to 25 other foreigners there, including some radio reporters from Ireland, a Canadian photographer with The National newspaper, a four-year-old girl who was travelling with her mother and her grandmother, who had been there an hour before us. They were bringing us water. They never told us how long we would be there or the reason. There was a mixture of soldiers and plainclothes.
It was not clear it was military when our car was stopped. Those people looked no different than the other [vigilantes], except for they had walkie-talkies. We couldn’t see their walkie-talkies until they stopped the car. We knew they were police or some sort of security force at that point, our best guess was that they were police. But we had no idea. They were obviously some kind of secret police because they weren’t wearing uniforms. We were then transferred into the custody of the army and that was clear to us because everyone was in uniform, there was a tank stationed very close to us, to where we were sitting, blocking off the street. And there was also an armoured personnel carrier with some soldiers inside. I couldn’t see how many.
We were just in traffic, right, so all the cars were being stopped. Things changed once they found out we were journalists, once we were foreign journalists, especially. That’s when the tone really changed. And again, that was something that we had to be upfront about because our passports are filled with journalists’ visas and that was when we were separated from the rest of the crowd and the man got into the front seat and started ordering our driver where to go. He was smiling the entire time. We felt threatened by the situation, but he wasn’t yelling at us or anything like that. He didn’t see I was tweeting the entire time. He couldn’t see.
These checkpoints happen every 100 metres. But we had never been asked before about who we were, what were we doing in Egypt, were we tourists, were we journalists? He took our passports and then he asked the question, so we had to be honest. We had to say that we were journalists. If I hadn’t been sitting in the back, we would never have been able to [tweet] and let anyone know what was happening. All of the other people who were taken with us, none of them could be in touch with anyone else. So we were secretly telling each other our phone numbers so that if any one of us got out we could call our family and our workplaces to say what was going on.
We were taken to basically the street. We were outside. We were sitting on the curb on the street in a military controlled zone. So there was no one allowed in or outside, everyone was escorted by military. We weren’t allowed to get up. We weren’t allowed to stand up. We weren’t allowed to walk around. If we had to go to the bathroom, we were escorted to a bank, it looked like, it was hard to tell what it was, and the soldiers stood right outside if you had to use the bathroom.
The soldiers were bringing plastic bags that they had confiscated from people and cars because these people and cars were trying to bring food and medical supplies into Tahrir Square. So the soldiers stopped people, took these bags from them, confiscated them, and put them in a giant pile at the foot of the tank. So there was like two dozen bags full of things, everything from bandages to water to food, and they were all confiscated. So they looked at one point in our driver’s trunk to see if we had any of that stuff, which obviously we didn’t.
Around dusk, we started to hear some gunshots fired. We counted about seven. We saw some military helicopters overhead. Obviously, they still had our phones. … Once they took my phones, I couldn’t do anything. At one point, the captain of the unit came over and accused me basically of deleting material from my phone. I told them that I hadn’t, which is true. I didn’t have time to do anything. And then he seemed satisfied with that.
At one point, Patrick asked why we were being held. And then he was told it was for our own safety because they were planning a large operation.
At one point, they told us they were keeping our passports because they were looking into our backgrounds. And it looked like there were representatives, perhaps, from the Ministry of the Interior. Patrick says definitely they were Ministry of the Interior. These guys are kind of wearing shiny shoes, suits, all flak jackets. And they came and they were poring over our phones and our passports along with the captain. I should say that everyone was armed, everyone had everything from bayonets to machine guns and they were ready to fire.
The streets got very quiet around us and we literally had no idea how long we were going to be there – if we were going to be spending the night, if we were going to be taken to another location or if we would just be let go. Then very shortly ago, they called the names of the Americans with the four-year-old girl. The grandmother, the mother and the four-year-old girl were actually on their way to the airport. They’re tourists. And they called their names, gave them back their passports and their phones. And then they called my name and then they called Patrick’s name and they took our passports and gave it back to us. And then they said we were free to go.
All of our phones were in this giant pile on a chair. The batteries had been removed from all of them. We had to sift through all of the phones and all of the batteries.
We were released along with all of the other people being detained, all of the other foreigners. Our passports were given back. We were never given any explanation about why we were scooped up, what made them decide to eventually let us go and now we’re just going to try to make our way back to our hotel.
We’re with our driver in our original car. They gave us back our car. They had taken the car and they had driven it away at one point. And Adel our driver, of course, was extremely worried.
