Getting detained in Cairo

Andrew Lee Butters of Time magazine writes about how he got punched and threatened at a makeshift checkpoint on the way into Cairo's Tahrir Square, where the bulk of the protesters are encamped. He's one of dozens of reporters being detained or roughed up by thugs, some of whom are believed to be taking orders from the government.

An excerpt from Butters' post:

More young men arrived, and they punched and frog-marched me to a wall where there were several others being held by the crowd, including a pair of Russian journalists, a Lebanese video crew, a kid who had been caught with anti-Mubarak signs, men with Islamic-style beards, and a poor Nigerian house cleaner who had left home without a passport and whom one raving brute in the crowd accused of being a drug dealer. “Mubarak good, the Egyptian system good!” he shouted at us, though it was hard to see from his decaying teeth, tattered clothes, and yellowed toenails that the Egyptian system had done him much good.