More info on this unfortunate story:
The White House yesterday demanded the Egyptian government round up and bring to justice the thugs who brutalized CBS foreign correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo’s main square. “We believe that those responsible for these acts need to be held accountable,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said of the prolonged beating and sexual assault on Logan by members of a 200-strong mob.
And a State Department spokeswoman said the United States expects an “investigation and accountability for anyone involved in violence during the demonstrations.””We’ve raised it publicly and privately,” spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said. The call for justice came as a concerned President Obama phoned the recuperating “60 Minutes” reporter.
“The president called her at her home around midday,” a Logan family friend told The Post. Obama asked the veteran war reporter about her condition and expressed his concern, the friend said.
In New York, a spokeswoman for the Egyptian Mission decried the attack and said the turmoil-wracked Arab state would investigate all attacks on journalists covering demonstrations before and after the fall of Hosni Mubarak last Friday. “What happened to Miss Logan is by all means unacceptable and shameful,” said spokeswoman Nihal Saad. Yesterday, Logan, 39, was home in Washington with her husband, Joseph Burkett, and two children. A deliveryman brought flowers to the couple’s fieldstone-and-brick Tudor-style home.
Inside, Logan also huddled with a senior colleague and pal, Kelli Halyard, head of CBS communications. Halyard said neither Logan nor Burkett was ready to talk publicly.
Friends said she wants to return to work, but won’t be coming back anytime soon after suffering what the network called “serious” internal injuries in the ugly Feb. 11 incident, which CBS revealed Tuesday.
“She has no idea how long this is going to take,” a source said. Logan and her crew were near Tahrir Square Friday, the day Egyptian strongman Mubarak stepped down, when a mob of jeering, leering men surrounded them. Their cameras continued rolling, capturing a tense-looking Logan trying to move away before she was grabbed and dragged off.
“She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers,” CBS said in a statement.
“She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning,” the network added. A CBS colleague told The Post, “Every day is a struggle [for her].” Meanwhile, left-wing journalist Nir Rosen resigned as a fellow at New York University in the wake of Twitter comments he made belittling Logan after learning of the attack.
“Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger,” Rosen tweeted Monday.
In an e-mail exchange with The Post, Rosen apologized. “It is never OK for a man to mock the sexual abuse or humiliation of women,” he said. “If I saw her I would try to find a way to apologize.” A native of South Africa, Logan has been CBS’s chief foreign correspondent since 2006 and has regularly filed reports from Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots for “60 Minutes” and the “CBS Evening News.”
The nightmarish attack occurred a week after she was detained by Egyptian police amid tensions over foreign coverage of the revolution. As part of the anti-media backlash, CNN’s Anderson Cooper had been beaten up and ABC correspondent Brian Hartman threatened with beheading. In Bahrain today, ABC News reporter Miguel Marquez was beaten during a military crackdown on deadly protests. Logan had taken precautions, bringing security with her, after her earlier troubles, “but it wasn’t enough,” a network source told The Post.
We wish her a speedy recovery and hope those goons suffer…
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