Thread: Journalists Assaulted in Egypt

ABC News Reporter Brian Hartman Threatened With Beheading
Attacks on Foreign Press Growing During Egyptian Uprising

28 comments
By MARK MOONEY
Feb. 3, 2011

Producer Brian Hartman, cameraman Akram Abi-hanna and two other ABC News employees were surrounded on a crowded road that leads from Cairo's airport to the city's downtown area.

While ABC News and other press agencies had been taking precautions to avoid volatile situations, the road to the airport had been a secure route until today. One of their two vehicles was carrying cameras and transmission equipment strapped to the roof, indicating they were foreign journalists.

Hartman says it was only through the appeal of Abi-hanna, who is Lebanese and a veteran ABC cameraman, that they were saved from being killed or severely beaten.

"We thought we were goners," Hartman said later. "We absolutely thought we were doomed."

Word of their harrowing ordeal came in a Twitter message from Hartman that stated, "Just escaped after being carjacked at a checkpoint and driven to a compound where men surrounded the car and threatened to behead us."

"The men released us only after our camera man appealed to the generous spirit of the Egyptian people, hugging and kissing an elder," he added in a subsequent tweet.

Minutes after receiving news that Hartman had been safely released, ABC News anchor Christiane Amanpour and her team were surrounded and interrogated by a threatening crowd in Cairo.

The alarm was sent back to ABC News headquarters in Cairo in a series of quick comments during a phone call. "We're in trouble on the bridge," was all that was initially said. The bridge is on the same road where Hartman and Abi-hanna were carjacked.

Moments later, the ABC News staffer said, "They're surrounding us."

Then cryptically, "We have to go."

Amanpour and her team were allowed to proceed, but it was the second time in two days that her team has been targeted by groups of men angry with foreign coverage of the demonstrations that are demanding President Hosni Mubarak end his 30-year rule by stepping down immediately.

Foreign news reporters have increasingly become targets of the attacks in Cairo as the Mubarak government teeters and dozens of reporters including CNN's Anderson Cooper and CBS anchor Katie Couric have been menaced, forced off the road, shoved against fences, and physically assaulted. A Greek reporter was stabbed in the leg.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs condemned the "systematic targeting" of journalists in Egypt, and the U.S. State Department described it as a "concerted campaign to intimidate."

Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said, "Egypt is seeking to create an information vacuum that puts it in the company of the world's worst oppressors."

The growing fury was noted by Hartman in his tweets before his confrontation.

"Getting reports of journalists being attacked all over Cairo," he tweeted Wednesday.

Hartman and Abi-hanna headed for the airport today to collect equipment that had been impounded upon their arrival Tuesday. After collecting their gear, Hartman tweeted, "Cairo Airport security had to hold back a spitting mad man who was shouting at one of my colleagues about media bias against the govt."

In today's incident, Hartman said the two-car convoy was stopped at one of the many makeshift checkpoints that have sprung up around Cairo, most of them created by neighborhood groups to protect themselves from looters.

Their drivers were forced into the back seats and one man tried to snatch a camera from the car, but it was grabbed back. Men from the checkpoint drove them down "a dusty, beat up street where some people opened up the dinged-up barricades and drove us down to a dingy little cul de sac," Hartman said.

A large banner of Mubarak hung over the street and dozens of men were standing around, Hartman said.

"Then they directed our driver to take us down a dark, narrow alleyway. A man sitting next to me with a cigarette dropping ashes on my shoulder.... No way, we can't go down this alley, I told our driver, and he turned off the car."

The two vehicles were quickly engulfed by men who poured out of the alley. "It gradually escalated, the tension and anger in their voice.... It was pretty clear we were in a threatening situation. People were making gestures and putting their fingers under my throat" and making a slitting motion, he said.

"A man in police uniform came up to me and said, 'So help me God.... I am going to cut off your head,'" Hartman recalled.

One man was yelling, "Cut their necks now, cut their necks now," and another pointed an imaginary machine gun at Hartman and made shooting noises.

"I couldn't see outside the windows except angry faces and the gestures. I thought we were absolutely doomed," Hartman said.

They were saved, he said, when Abi-hanna "lunged forward and gave a great big bear hug" to a man who appeared to be an elder of the neighborhood. "He gave him a kiss on each cheek and told the man referring to me, 'He is my guest. He is your guest in this country. Egyptian people are better than this."

Hartman said the cameraman appealed to the "renowned generosity of the Egyptian people."

Abi-hanna's words "seemed to calm the tensions down" enough for them to get the cars in gear and escape, despite the efforts of some to stop them.

Hartman said that through it all, none of their equipment was stolen and they were not punched or physically abused.

Reporters for other news outlets, including NBC, BBC and FOX, have reported that their hotel rooms have been ransacked.

Journalists Targeted in Egypt

Some men charged onto the roof of the Ramses Hilton Hotel where APTN maintains a satellite dish that networks, including ABC News, use to transmit their stories. They broke apart the dish and APTN technicians had to jump from the roof to another roof two floors below.

Security personnel at the Marriot Hotel warned news outlets today to take their transmission gear off of the balconies because suspicious people were looking up at the balconies, possibly trying to identify the rooms of journalists.

Jeffrey Schneider, senior vice president of ABC News, said, "We are assessing the security situation literally on a minute to minute basis. Our priority is to ensure the safety of all of our staff in the field."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/abc ... d=12832774

Fox News Team Severely Beaten, Hospitalized In Cairo
By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday February 3, 2011 @ 9:37am PST
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Nellie Andreeva

FOX News Channel's veteran foreign correspondent Greg Palkot and his camerman Olaf Wiig have suffered severe injuries in Cairo while covering the unrest in the Egypt capital. Palkot was badly beaten and Wiig has a possible broken jaw after attacked by pro-Hosni Mubarak supporters yesterday. Both were hospitalized overnight. Out of concern for the safety of its journalists, Fox News kept the incident a secret until their release from the hospital today. In 2007, the same producer, Olaf Wiig, was taken hostage in the Gaza strip with correspondent Steve Centanni. They were released 2 weeks later.

This marks the most brazen attack on American journalists in Egypt where violence has been escalating, with 10 anti-Hosni Mubarak protesters killed over the past 24 hours in Tahrir Square alone. Yesterday, CNN's Anderson Cooper and ABC News' Christiane Amanpour were confronted by angry mobs supporting Mubarak but left largely unscathed. There have been reports of the Egyptian military rounding up foreign journalists, possibly for their own protection, and keeping them away from the areas of intense fighting.

UPDATE: On air, Fox News' John Roberts just gave more details about the incident involving Palkot and Wiig. "Greg Palkot who you have seen with all his amazing coverage of the protest for the last few days and Olaf Wiig, his dedicated cameraman, were above Tahrir Square yesterday, reporting on the incidents going on there, reporting on the back and forth between the demonstrators and pro government forces," Roberts said. "They were forced to leave their position when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at it, a large fire erupted. They were forced to flee. They ran out and ran right into the pro Mubarak crowd and were severely beaten and had to be taken to the hospital, spent the night in the hospital. The extent of their injuries was fairly grave, however, they have been released from the hospital."

http://www.deadline.com/2011/02/fox-new ... -in-cairo/

TIME Exclusive: CBS's Lara Logan and Crew Detained in Cairo As Violence Escalates

Sources have told TIME Magazine that Lara Logan, chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, has been detained along with her crew by Egyptian police outside Cairo's Israeli embassy

This detention comes only a day after Logan herself reported on the intensified efforts of the Mubarak regime to clamp down on foreign journalists covering the ongoing protests.

"The army just shifted dramatically to a much more aggressive posture, and they have absolutely prevented us from filming anywhere," Logan said Wednesday. She has been filing reports from the country since Jan. 31. She went on to note that even when Logan and crew left their hotel without cameras, they were followed relentlessly by officials.

CBS had no comment on Thursday's developments. "For security reasons CBS will not be commenting on, or revealing in any way, CBS personnel activity, movement or location," a spokesman told TIME Thursday.

As pro-Mubarak forces continue to isolate and disrupt journalists, most real-time reporting has now shifted instead to Twitter.

Midday Thursday, CNN's Anderson Cooper — who was physically assaulted in Tahrir Square Wednesday - tweeted about his vehicle being assaulted Thursday: "Situation on ground in #egypt very tense. Vehicle I was in attacked. My window smashed. All ok."

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof also warned his colleagues via Twitter that police were aggressively raiding hotels, looking for journalists.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/03/tim ... z1CvenkdED