Lara Logan Speaks Out After Assault in Egypt

By Alex Weprin 

CBS News foreign correspondent Lara Logan will give her first TV interview since being attacked and sexually assaulted in Egypt Feb. to her colleagues at “60 Minutes.”

The segment will run on this Sunday’s installment of the program. Scott Pelley, who is the likely replacement for Katie Couric at the “CBS Evening News,” conducted the interview.

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Today she spoke to the New York TimesBrian Stelter about the ordeal. Logan goes into some detail about what happened:

As the cameraman, Richard Butler, was swapping out a battery, Egyptian colleagues who were accompanying the camera crew heard men nearby talking about wanting to take Ms. Logan’s pants off. She said: “Our local people with us said, ‘We’ve gotta get out of here.’ That was literally the moment the mob set on me.”

Mr. Butler, Ms. Logan’s producer, Max McClellan, and two locally hired drivers were “helpless,” Mr. Fager said, “because the mob was just so powerful.” A bodyguard who had been hired to accompany the team was able to stay with Ms. Logan for a brief period of time.

“For Max,” the producer, “to see the bodyguard come out of the pile without her, that was one of the worst parts,” Mr. Fager said. He said Ms. Logan “described how her hand was sore for days after — and the she realized it was from holding on so tight” to the bodyguard’s hand.

“My clothes were torn to pieces,” Ms. Logan said.

She declined to go into more detail about the assault but said: “What really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence.”

After being rescued by a group of civilians and Egyptian soldiers, she was swiftly flown back to the United States. “She was quite traumatized, as you can imagine, for a period of time,” Mr. Fager said. Ms. Logan said she decided almost immediately that she would speak out about sexual violence both on behalf of other journalists and on behalf of “millions of voiceless women who are subjected to attacks like this and worse.”

Logan tells Stelter that she hopes her interview and experience will raise awareness of how women are treated in certain parts of the world.

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