Having a policeman say he wanted to kill me wasn’t my most frightening moment yesterday in Cairo. That came when police and civilians smashed our car windows — with the five of us inside it — jumped up and down on the roof, spat on us, pulled my hair, beat my friends and dragged us into a police van.
We emerged from our confrontation with President Hosni Mubarak’s police and operatives alive and relatively healthy. Violence over the past 11 days, much of it in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, has killed as many as 300 people in Egypt.
We got out of the car when we arrived at about 11:30 am in Talaat Harb square near Tahrir. In less than a minute, a mob of about 40 civilian men surrounded our car, banging on the vehicle and grabbing our bags. They looted medical supplies and food and drinks, uninterested in our explanation of whom it was for. Our ordeal came to an end with a policeman saying, “Now you should go home ...Go on Facebook and tell your friends the streets are not safe, and that they shouldn’t come to Tahrir.”
