BLEEDING from a knife cut to the wrist and winded by a kick to the stomach, Mohammed Salema watched in terror as the mob of hooligans closed in.
Already he had seen them stab and beat fans around him, at the back of the stand where he was trapped. A few were doing victory dances, waving their weapons in the air. But most of the attackers hadn’t finished their rampage yet; now they were pushing his friends over the back of the stadium where there was a 30ft (9m) drop on to concrete, and he was going to be next.
“I said to the nearest one ‘Please don’t do it, I will die’,” Mr Salema told The Sunday
Telegraph. “But he just laughed in my face.
“‘That’s the idea!’ he said.” Then Mr Salema was punched, grabbed and pushed over the edge, breaking his leg and spraining his arm as he landed.
At least 74 of his fellow fans died at al-masry football stadium in the working-class city of Port Said on Wednesday, many of them crushed en masse as they scrambled to escape the rampage. It was Egypt’s worst football disaster.
But to Mr Salema and his friends, supporters of Cairo’s al-ahly football club, the deaths were revenge on the club’s tough supporters for joining the Tahrir Square protests.
“Tantawi must go on trial for this,” said another man, referring to the dour army commander who stepped in last year to run Egypt when the former president Hosni Mubarak was forced out.
Outside the Cairo headquarters of Ahly, the Manchester United of Egypt, a sobbing old woman in a black Abaya embraced Mr Salema, a 24-year-old tea shop worker, his leg in a cast.
Around him hundreds of young fans known as “ultras”, draped in football colours, many in tears, waved photographs of their dead friends and sang club anthems.
Like most of those around him he was convinced the “hooligans” had undercover police among them, perhaps including the man who threw him from the stadium. “They showed no mercy at all. They were not normal football supporters,” he said.
He counts himself lucky to have escaped with a broken leg. He was helped to hospital by Ahly fans. Others who were pushed off the upper levels of the stadium died from their injuries.
Overwhelmed by his recollections, he collapsed from grief and had to be carried away by his friends, sobbing uncontrollably. But grief wasn’t the only emotion in evidence. The crowd was angry, and the word “Qusas” — retribution — was on everybody’s lips.
“We must destroy Port Said,” the young hotheads chanted, an indication of more trouble ahead, although some Ahly fans said the injured had been helped by Port Said people.
Since the revolution, in comparison to the quiet authoritarian days of Mr Mubarak when the police state ensured a rigid order, Egyptians have become used to almost daily violence. On Thursday night, 24 hours after the stadium disaster, it had started again. Hundreds of Ahly fans, convinced that the hooligans who killed their friends had official support, attacked the buildings of the interior ministry.
Several fans were killed and hundreds injured by military police, who fired volleys of tear gas to beat back fans’ attempts to burn the building to the ground. The casualty toll added to the 1,000 injuries Ahly supporters suffered in the disaster at Port Said.
By yesterday afternoon, a total of nine had died in clashes around the country, and health officials said about 2,500 had been injured.
The political impact also reverberated through Egypt, threatening to put more pressure on the military, whose rule was greeted with relief a year ago, but which is now hated by many. Politicians queued up to denounce officialdom and the army for the disaster — with little real evidence to rely on — but the Muslim Brotherhood, now the biggest party in parliament, had to equivocate. It relies on an undeclared partnership with the army, and could only complain vaguely about old regime elements paying thugs to attack.
The original violence might have been foreseen, however.
On Wednesday, when Ahly fans started arriving at the Masry ground some guessed there would be trouble. The two clubs share a long-standing enmity and in the past year that has worsened after Ahly’s toughest fans have joined the protests in Tahrir Square, fighting the security forces on the side of the revolution.
Masry fans have not liked seeing their sworn enemies become heroes. Survivors said that, unlike at normal games, no spectator was searched for weapons before entering the stadium, and that there were only a handful of police.
“There were people carrying knives and guns,” said an Ahly fan, Mustapha. “I knew things would be bad at the end of the match.” Another said: “The police stood and looked at what was going on. They did less than nothing. They were scared of getting involved.” Such claims fuelled the belief the attacks were pre-planned, with official sanction. But not everyone was convinced it was a conspiracy. “In Egypt we are used to chaos and incompetence,” one man said on the sidelines of the fans’ rally.
Since the revolution, official incompetence has got worse, especially among the police whose reputation and morale has plummeted. Until the final whistle the match, won by Masri 3-1, went by without serious incident, although Ahly fans hurled fireworks at their opponents. Then a hard core of Masry fans known as “baltagiyya” charged onto the pitch to chase Ahly players and fans. Riot police helped the players to get away, but did nothing to stop the hooligans attacking rival fans — further fuelling the conspiracy theory.
As terrified players escaped back into their changing rooms, the killing began.
Afterwards, fans swapped horrific stories. One described how a man was stabbed in the eye with a knife. A 13-year-old boy, who travelled to Port Said with his father, told The Sun-
day Telegraph how he saw young men beaten to death. Several fans insisted they had seen Masry hooligans stealing wallets at knife point, or robbing the dead and injured.
The highest death toll seems to have occurred when fans fled the stand into an exit corridor with a bolted door at the end. Many were crushed to death as others crowded in.
Muhammed Ahmad, 21, a cook, said he was forced to the ground in the crush.
“I put out my hands, and they landed in pools of blood,” he said. His friend Ahmed Abedlgayed, 22, died next to him. “His wedding was going to be held in two months time,” Mr Ahmad said. “Now his wedding guests will be attending his funeral.”
Hundreds of families in Cairo had similar stories, as the newspapers filled with photographs of young men, most of whom had repeatedly risked their lives in the revolution.
The family of Kharim Khouzam found his body in the Port Said morgue after searching for hours. The 19 year-old, a student of management at Cairo’s German University, was a popular member of the team fan club. He was its official photographer, and rarely missed a match. In the days since his death his stencilled image has appeared on walls in the city, a mark of respect by revolutionaries.
“He was always funny, always telling jokes, usually about Hosni Mubarak,” said Rafiq Magdi, aged 19, an engineering student at the same university. The pair had been friends since childhood.
At a candlelit vigil held at a church near his home in the upmarket Heliopolis suburb on Friday hundreds came to show their respects, ranging from boys wearing hoodies to middle-aged men in suits.
“Karim was an optimist who believed the revolution was changing Egypt and would ensure a good future for us all,” Mr Magdi said. “Many young Egyptians talk all the time about leaving Egypt. But he always wanted to stay here and build the future.”
His family are not yet sure how he died. His injuries suggest he was beaten to death or died in the crush. “I will always remember him singing the Horreya, our revolutionary song about freedom,” Mr Magdi said. “He risked his life many times in Tahrir Square. We will remember him as another martyr for freedom.”