Journalists covering anti-war protest roughed up by police

Reporters Without Borders protested today against new police attacks on journalists covering anti-war demonstrations in Cairo. "Yet again police have targeted journalists," said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard. "We are very concerned and once again urge interior minister Habib al-Adeli to ensure that journalists, whether Egyptians or foreigners, are allowed to do their job freely and cover protests without having to fear for their own safety." As they were dispersing would-be demonstrators on 4 April and making arrests, more a dozen plainclothes police seized Philip Ide, of the British paper Mail on Sunday, when he left a café after talking with relatives of a recently-arrested militant. He was thrown to the ground, roughly held down and his camera seized. When he went to the police station in the Khalifa district to get it back, he was refused. Rhoda Metcalfe, a Canadian freelance for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Radio Netherlands, was roughed up by other plainclothes officers who seized her tape-recorder. Two young journalists from Al Ahram Hebdo were hit. When they went to the police station to complain, they were advised not to do so if they wanted to avoid problems. Four plainclothes police set on Laura-Julie Perrault, a reporter for the Canadian daily La Presse, when she refused to leave the security area. Her fixer, a journalist with the local French-language weekly paper Al Ahram Hebdo, was threatened with arrest. Half an hour later, when they were in a nearby street, one of the police confiscated the fixer's press card, emptied her bag on the ground and took her papers, which have not been returned. Police hit or threatened at least five journalists during anti-war protests in Cairo on 20, 21 and 22 March.