from www.nydailynews.com – “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan suffered a “brutal and sustained” sexual assault at the hands of a large group of men while covering the Egyptian uprising, CBS News said.
It happened at Friday’s jubilation in Cairo’s Tahrir Square after President Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down.
“A dangerous element” in the crowd surrounded Logan and her crew, CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco said in a statement.
“It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy. In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew,” the statement said.
“She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.”
Logan, 39, went home to the United States on the first flight Saturday and is recovering in a hospital, CBS said.
CBS, where Logan is the Emmy-winning chief foreign correspondent, said there would be no further comment about the attack and Logan asked for privacy.
At least 140 reporters have been injured or killed covering Egypt since Jan. 30, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Logan is a fearless foreign correspondent who has reported from some of the world’s most dangerous places.
Logan and her crew had been detained at gunpoint by security forces on Feb. 2, the same day that many journalists were beaten or kidnapped.
She was kicked out of the country and came back to New York, where she told the Charlie Rose Show last Monday that she wanted desperately to go back.
“It’s very hard for me to be away from this story,” she said. “I feel, in one sense, like a failure professionally. I feel like I failed because I didn’t deliver, and I take that responsibility very seriously.
“Fundamentally it’s in my blood to be there and to be on the street and listening to people and to do the best reporting that I can.”
She acknowledged that “I put my family through a difficult situation” but said she felt worse for the Egyptians left behind in the interrogation cells.
“In the end foreign journalists have somewhere to go. They have a safe place to go, but these people don’t,” Logan told Rose.
She got her wish and returned to Egypt, arriving Friday – the day she was attacked.
A South African, Logan is married to a federal defense contractor from Texas whom she met in Iraq. They have a two-year-old son.