14 DAY TRIAL // While the US and foreign journalists who have had the chance have already left Cairo because of the explosive situation, Anderson Cooper remained behind. Following a series of attacks on himself and his crew, Cooper has gone underground.
As we also noted the other day, Cooper and his CNN crew were attacked by protesters in Egypt at least a couple of times. Though no one was seriously injured, there was no denying the risk they were running.
Consequently, given that they don’t want to leave Cairo just yet, they have decided to go into hiding.
As the video below will confirm, Cooper is now broadcasting live from a secret hiding, which he’s forced to change periodically because he’s running the risk pro-Mubarak protesters find out his whereabouts.
“I can’t tell you where we are, frankly for our own safety,” Cooper says at the beginning of the live transmission, as the video below shows.
“Journalists don’t like to become part of the story but unfortunately they have been made part of the story here over the last 24 hours,” he adds.
Because of the violence towards journalists witnessed – and experienced – Cooper has decided that he and his crew must go into hiding to avoid coming to more serious bodily harm.
“Systematically, we have seen journalists attacked, we have seen cameras taken down... we would like to be showing you instead of... this strange image of us sitting on the floor of an undisclosed location in dim lighting, we would like to be showing you pictures, live pictures, of what’s happening in Liberation Square right now,” he says.
“But we can’t do that because our cameras have systematically been taken down through threats, through intimidation, through actual physical attacks,” he adds.
Nevertheless, the transmission also included some footage shot over the past few days, showing how violent the clashes between the two groups of protesters had become.
For the time being, Cooper remains in Cairo, from where he’ll continue to broadcast and tweet as often as possible.
See the video below for his first transmission from the safe hiding place. *Please be advised that it contains very graphic images.
