AUC grad student describes arrest

This comes from the Huffington news feed as well:

Today 10:51 PM Description Of Arrest In Cairo

Nicole H., a 25-year-old graduate student at the American University in Cairo, studying Political Science and Middle East Studies, was arrested on Friday and sent HuffPost a description of her experiences:

A crowd once more formed around us with people screaming and spitting at the windows. The police did nothing to discourage this. A police man was sitting between me and the window and he leaned back to allow a man to call me a sharmuta (whore) and then punch me in the face. Luckily, he had to reach in through the window so he didn’t have too much strength behind it. Tom was sitting on my other side and he angrily pushed the guy’s arm back out the window.

At this point the police decided to move us again. This time we were taken to a proper police station. We sat inside while they went through our stuff and continued to insult us. We were told that we were being handed over to the army, which was an unexpected relief. They moved us into a police truck, one with an open back and glass windows on the sides. I was wearing a hoodie and at this point I put my hood up and tried to conceal that I’m a foreigner. Eve and Tom look wonderfully ambiguous but there’s no doubt that I am non-Egyptian.

Eve and I were holding hands and a man slid the window open in front of us to spit on us before Tom managed to get it shut again. I must admit that at this point I started crying and proceeded to bury my face in Eve’s chest as she held me and patted the top of my head and told me that we were going to be alright.

The police drove us to an army checkpoint in Coptic Cairo. We were all so happy to be turned over to the army. They were polite and gave us water and tried repeatedly to calm us down, promising that we were safe now.