EGYPTIAN student Sherif ElSaeidy was relieved last night after hearing his family back home in Cairo are safe and well after the country descended into chaos.
The 19-year-old, who is studying at the University of Huddersfield, never imagined protests demanding an end to the 30-year-rule of president Hosni Mubarak would end up on such a mass scale.
Sherif, who currently lives in Ashenhurst with other students from Egypt, told the Examiner how he returned from the capital city Cairo just ten days ago after visiting friends and family.
He said: “Before I left Cairo there were lots of groups on Facebook saying there were going to be protests.
“We didn’t think it was going to be like what was happening in Tunisia. We thought most of the citizens in Egypt would be too scared to do anything.
“No-one imagined it was going to be anything like this.”
Today is the eighth day of widespread protests in which at least 100 people are believed to have been killed during the unrest.
Sherif’s parents, 22-year-old brother and 13-year-old sister live just 15 minutes from Tahrir square, the central Cairo plaza where protesters first gathered to oppose Mubarak’s regime.
“Everybody I know is on the street outside their homes securing the area because prisoners have escaped from the jails,” he said.
“My brother is always there with the other youths to make sure their cars and apartments are secure and families are safe.
“A lot of people think the prisoners were released in order to scare people.
“And there are no police. Imagine a country with no police – it’s the army that is trying to secure the country now not the police.
“I was worried for my family at the start of the protests because of the criminals and prisoners escaping from Mokattam jail near to my house.
“All the mobile phone networks were cut off but now they are back on and I managed to speak to them.”
Sherif wants Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading opposition moderate, to become the next president.
The management logistics student is optimistic the Egyptian people will overthrow Mubarak. He said: “No-one needs or wants the president and I don’t like him. One of the reasons I am studying here in Huddersfield is because the education in Egypt isn’t good.
“And I am going to work somewhere like Dubai after I finish my course because the salaries are very low in Egypt and there are very high prices.
“A lot of people want to escape from the country. The president doesn’t develop the country. We have the Suez Canal and the pyramids, we are a tourist country so we should have a lot of money.”
