Sexually Assaulted in Egypt | Lara Logan's Career As Top Reporter

CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan in Egypt’s Tahrir Square moments before she was assaulted covering the jubilation after the resignation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. There are no suggestions that any of the men visible behind Logan were involved in her assault.RedTracker| New details are emerging regarding the assault of Lara Logan, chief foreign correspondent for CBS News network, who was set upon by a mob of more than 200 people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square celebrating the resignation of Hosni Mubarak.

While the focus of our article is Lara Logan, The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that other journalists were attacked as well, as part of a last ditch effort by Mubarak supporters to censor news of the uprising.

CPI members Jehad Ali and Lara LoganLogan is a member of the CPJ Board of Directors, overseeing the program that aids journalists who have been victims of violence and repression.

“We have seen Lara’s compassion at work while helping journalists who have faced brutal aggression while doing their jobs,” CPJ Chairman Paul Steiger said. “She is a brilliant, courageous, and committed reporter. Our thoughts are with Lara as she recovers.” via CPJ

Details of Lara Logan Assault

Logan was assaulted by a mob of more than 200 people, enduring ‘a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating,’ according to CBS. The correspondent was separated from her team and then attacked, saved by a group of women and about 20 Egyptian soldiers.

Logan taken to the Four Season Hotel, where she was treated and sedated, then flown back to the US immediately and hospitalized in a New York hospital for five days. The fearless reporter is now recovering at home in Washington D.C.

In details in today’s South African News, Lara Logan — born and raised in Durban, South Africa — has clarified that during the attack her clothes were ripped off; she was kicked, punched and had her hair torn out; and she was sexually assaulted.

Logan said that the group of Egyptian women threw themselves on top of her, protecting her from further harm and full-penetration rape.

The Daily Mail writes that what originally appeared to be bite marks all over Lara’s body and including her private parts are now believed to be the result of extreme pinching. Medical sources say that she was stripped and beaten with the makeshift poles that were used for flag flying during the demonstration.

Logan Returned to Egypt Days After Being Arrested

Lara Logan, who had been detained in Egypt and left the country after being released from police custody, interviewed on Charlie Rose before her return to Egypt. Logan is an amazingly articulate journalist who went back to the country to finish her story, knowing that she was at risk.

Logan spoke of feeling that she had failed as a journalist, not being on the scene in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Friends today say that Lara Logan has made it clear she will return to the Middle East and her duties as CBS chief foreign correspondent.

“They blindfolded me, but they said if I didn’t take it off they wouldn’t tie my hands. They kept us in stress positions — they wouldn’t let me put my head down. It was all through the night. We were pretty exhausted….We were accused of being Israeli spies. We were accused of being agents. We were accused of everything.” via Esquire

Logan says she became terribly ill while in police custody.

 “I’d been ill for a few days. I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone at CBS. I vomited so much that they did have a medic see me at this secret facility - they wouldn’t tell us where we were.

“Then I was begging for an IV (intravenous drip) and, at first, they wouldn’t. I brought up everything that the medic gave me. I was sick all over the interrogation cell. Eventually they put me on an IV.

“We were accused of being Israeli spies, agents. We were accused of everything.”

Lara Logan on Charlie Rose before returning to Cairo

Lara Logan Always Faced Danger

South Africa News writes that as a student on the Sunday Tribune, Logan covered “a particularly brutal murder of two English women at Sodwana in KwaZulu-Natal. Logan was advised not to go to the area because the murderer had not been found.

Instead, young woman Lara Logan went to the area, spending several days working with the police in pursuit of the suspect, reporting first-hand from the muder scene.

Lara Logan and Julian Manyon

Lara Logan has a decade of reporting from the region under her belt. As a British GMTV correspondent in Afghanistan, Logan became involved in a 2001 controversy when male British ITN reported Julian Manyon suggested that she used her ‘considerable physical charms’ to get access to Northern Alliance leaders.

Furious with Manyon’s insinuation that Logan’s looks were responsible for her success as a reporter, the correspondent replied:

“After a month in Afghanistan, I am the only British journalist actually living on the front line. The other journalist is a male colleague from Fox News,” Logan pointed out.

“Julian Manyon [ITN’s Asia correspondent] sleeps some 20 miles behind the front line but arrives each day and asks for help.

“I happily agree to help as his ITN colleagues were great during the period when I was waiting for our cameraman to arrive.” via The Guardian

Julian Manyon wrote an article for American Spectator that ‘jealous competitors’ suggested his access in Afghanistan had less to do with his own talents and more to do with the ‘considerable physical charms of my travelling companion, the delectable Lara Logan, who exploits her God-given advantages with a skill that Mata Hari might envy.’

Although Logan acknowledged Manyon’s remarks were not intended to cause offence, she took issue being compared to Mata Hari, the exotic dancer and spy who was executed by the French for allegedly betraying secrets to the Germans during the first world war.

“I’m sure Julian meant the reference to Mata Hari in a light-hearted way,” she says, adding, witheringly, “although I am surprised he has so much time to write lengthy articles for magazines.

“If General Babajan smiles around me, perhaps it is because I offer him respect and attempt, at least, to talk to him in a non-demanding manner - an elementary part of making contacts and thereby getting the story.

“He also smiles around Steve, my colleague from Fox News, who adopts a similar journalistic manner.

“Guess what? Steve’s also allowed to stay. It’s not rocket science, it’s understanding people.” via The Guardian

The alleged Dutch spy Mata Hari served as a reference used to describe CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan’s journalistic skills in Afghanistan by fellow correspondent Julian Manyon.