Lara Logan, the distinguished CBS News correspondent, was attacked and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo on 11 February, the day that the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced from power, the network news division said in a statement Tuesday.
After the mob surrounded her, Ms. Logan “suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated twenty Egyptian soldiers,” the network said.
Ms. Logan and a camera crew, along with an unknown number of security staff members, were covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square in central Cairo, where untold thousands of people had gathered. CBS said the group that enveloped Ms. Logan, “a dangerous element” within the larger crowd, numbered more than two hundred people “whipped into a frenzy.” She was separated from the crew and then attacked.
After being rescued, “she reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering,” the network said.
Ms. Logan visited Cairo on two occasions during the protests that roiled the country in January and February. On her first trip, she was detained and interrogated by security authorities. She returned on 10 February, one day before the attack took place.
During the Egypt protests, dozens of journalists were attacked, detained, or harassed by security forces, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Some female journalists complained about being singled out by crowds. The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether there were other known sexual assaults of journalists in Egypt.
CBS said that it would have no further comment on the incident, and that Ms. Logan and her family had requested privacy.
15 February 2011
Nasty job
Rico says she didn't have good security, obviously, and paid the price. Brian Stelter has an article in The New York Times about the assault on Lora Logan:
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