Alastair Beach: Journalists were stabbed, beaten or intimidated

As detentions during civil strife go, the two hours I spent outside Cairo’s feared interior ministry was not too harrowing. Myself and ten other reporters and foreign students had been picked up by the army at one of the military checkpoints surrounding central Cairo’s Tahrir Square and escorted to a pavement outside the imposing building.

There was no roughing up or good cop-bad cop routines. On the contrary – crisps, tea biscuits and cheap Cleopatra cigarettes were handed out by soldiers including a smiling 23-year-old called Mohammad, who explained how he had picked up his stuttering English by playing the Final Fantasy video game.

After our passports were taken and possibly logged by the authorities, we were released. But only on one condition - that we did not try and get back into Tahrir Square.

The incident highlights the regime’s determination to keep reporters away from the tens of thousands of angry Egyptians protesting in Tahrir Square. Whether this is for our own protection or not is unclear.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded 24 detentions of journalists and 21 assaults. A string of journalists were stabbed, beaten or intimidated by pro-Mubarak supporters on Thursday.

In Geneva, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, called the detentions of journalists "clearly a blatant attempt to stifle news", while Reporters Without Borders said in a statement that “not a single media outlet in Egypt today has escaped the violence.”

The government has denounced allegations of state complicity in attacks as “fiction” – even though a spokesman did say some media outlets were “taking sides” against Egypt. In an effort to curb the spread of information, the regime cut the Internet early in the protests. Yesterday, the Qatar-based satellite channel Al Jazeera said that its office in Cairo had been burnt and destroyed by "gangs of thugs".

Indeed the mood of many of the ad hoc “neighbourhood watch” groups around the city appears to have changed too. Yesterday one genial middle-aged man called Mohammad, who stands vigil outside my central Cairo apartment most nights, took me aside as I left my flat.

With a grave look on his face he said that the military police had been telling the vigilante groups along our street that some of the foreigners in Egypt were possible spies – a cynical lie which has also been propagated by state television. Very apologetically he asked that I rip out a page from my notebook which contained his phone number.

“Thank you for being so understanding,” he said. “I have to be careful.”