Journalism Student Detained in Cairo

A UC Berkeley journalism graduate student who was detained in Egypt while documenting local unrest late last week returned to the Bay Area unharmed yesterday.

James Buck, 29, said he was photographing a sit-in in Mahalla el-Kobra, a town north of Cairo, on Thursday evening when police abruptly took him into custody without explanation.

Around 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Buck was released without charges and escorted to the Cairo International Airport, from which he flew to Amsterdam and then to San Francisco.

"We're glad James is home safely," said Rob Gunnison, the graduate school's director of school affairs. "We'll be talking about this at school for a while. ... Other students are really eager to hear from him."

Buck is pursuing concurrent master's degrees in journalism and international studies, with concentrations in photography and multimedia and Middle Eastern studies, respectively. He flew to Egypt in late March to complete research for a thesis project, exploring how bloggers in the country serve as an alternative to the mainstream press.

But last week, riots against rising prices and low wages broke out across the nation. Buck said he had been photographing locals with missing family members in Mahalla. He and a local translator were leaving the site by taxi cab when police pulled them over and took them to a local station.

"It was not the type of arrest where they show you a badge, they stop, give you a chance to stop and present yourself-it was a forceful, grabbing, shoving, bodily type of detention," he said. "I wasn't beat or anything, but it was certainly not by the books in any way."

Several photographers at the site from media outlets such as Reuters were also taken into custody, said Neil Henry, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism.

The police did not take Buck's cell phone, and he immediately began sending text message updates to his Twitter blog. At 6:33 p.m. local Egyptian time, he posted a single word: "Arrested."

As police shuttled Buck and his translator between various offices into the next day, Buck continued to discreetly update his blog and call friends and media outlets. That his cell phone remained alive was a "miracle," he said.

One contact was Sarah Terry-Cobo, a student at the journalism school who had interned with Buck at The Oakland Tribune.

"He sounded nervous, not panicked, but ... his voice was shaking," she said.

Meanwhile, university officials contacted the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, which sent a local lawyer to negotiate Buck's release.

Alarm grew among students and officials at the journalism school.

"We're something of a family, we're not a huge school," Henry said. "Knowing one of us is in detention makes us feel powerless about it when it happens on the far side of the world."

Buck said he feared disappearing, being beaten or dying in prison, all of which were threats uttered by police through his translator, a Mahalla local named Mohammed Maree, who remains in custody.

"What if the hours became days? Would the hours become months or years?" said Buck, who speaks conversational Arabic. "You realize how easily you can become a statistic and disappear from the face of the earth."

Buck has visited Egypt three times before. Despite last week's events, he said his fascination with the country remains as strong as ever.

"What's happening in Egypt is not the result of people, but the result of political forces," he said. "That does not in any way affect my opinion of Egypt or affect my desire to return as soon as I can."

Tags: JAMES BUCK, EGYPT, NEIL HENRY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM