FOX News
Fox News Reporter Greg Palkot and his cameraman Olaf Wiig talking on camera for the first time about the beating they took at the hands of thugs in Cairo, Egypt earlier this week.
They talked to Fox News Correspondent John Roberts about how they were repeatedly hit in the head and all over their bodies with fists, open hands, sticks, rocks. Their injuries are still very visible and graphic. They are fortunate to still be alive.
Fox News correspondent Greg Palkot and cameraman Olaf Wiig were in Tahrir Square during the worst of the violence last week. When the building from which they were reporting came under siege, they were forced to flee into the streets and right into the middle of pro-government supporters.
The two were both severely beaten — to the point they had to be hospitalized. The two have now returned to London, and in their first interview since the incident, recounted the danger they experienced.
“The main street was a total war zone, it was smoke, it was rocks being thrown, it was Molotov cocktails, it was flames, it was live fire,” said Palkot, who with Wiig is a veteran reporter who’s been to war zones throughout the world.
“I got grabbed and I thought at that moment, I thought, ‘Ok, I’m really now in trouble,'” and it was immediately four or five people grabbing hold of you,” said Wiig.
“People are all over him,” Palkot said of his colleague. “Within about 30 seconds, people are all over us — and that’s where our life or death struggle began.”
Palkot said he was pummeled with open hands, fists, sticks and rocks. Attackers were “principally going for the head again and again and again. The head was the target but the rest of the body is fair game too.”
Wiig said he thought to himself that surely he could “talk some reason into somebody, surely this isn’t, they’re not going to kill us right here.’ And the more they hit you, the more you realized, actually, they probably could right now.”
Wiig is now sporting a bald patch at the back of his head where he was shaved so doctors could stitch up two large gashes. With a right eye that is purple and yellow, he described other injuries, including a smaller gash on his forehead.
“I’ve got two really good-sized lacerations on the back of my head,” Wiig said, “and a stab wound in the back of my leg. My back just looks like a piece of modern art, just completely black and blue.”
Pointing to a big bruise on his left temple, Palkot said he remembers a hit to the left side of his head that “blanked my vision out to some degree, blanked my hearing from my left ear to some degree, and that’s when I thought I was going to go down.”
The two agreed that at the start of the attack adrenaline kept them going. But knowing they had a lot to live for pushed them to try to remain conscious.
“I was absolutely not ready to die that day, you know. I’ve got a beautiful wife and loving family, and I just want to get back,” Wiig said.
Palkot and Wiig eventually found their way to an Egyptian armored personnel carrier and were taken to the hospital. But their ordeal didn’t end there. They were taken to the headquarters of the secret police, photographed and questioned before finally being released.
Wild Thing’s comment……..
Glad they are gonig to be ok, they were almost killed.
These two take and get a lot of dangerous assignments…I hope they both recover quickly.
I can’t believe the number of people here in America who think this is a Democracy movement. This isn’t any Democracy movement, this is a movement by the Islamics to control Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. What we see now in Iran is what we’re going to see in the rest of the Muslim world. Elections in Iran are a joke because the Mullah’s hold all the power but fools here were praising the so-called Democracy movement last year. People here were so deluded about Iran they were supporting the man behind the suicide attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. What we’re seeing is no Democracy movement but the Books of Daniel and Revelation coming to pass.
Even if it were a Democracy, I don’t know if that would be a good thing or not. The left has so polluted the word, and has claimed that WE the United States are a Democracy, we are not.
“Democratic” in its original meaning refers to unlimited majority rule . . . a social system in which, one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.
So where is a deomcracy such a great thing. It is not. Worse is a Theocracy, or Shariah Law. The Romans went from a Republic to a democracy and this is primarily why the Founders wanted nothing to do with a Democracy.
This is what the press has been telling the American people for such a long time, they are even starting to believe it.
You’re exactly correct, Mark.
Technically, here in America, we are a Constitutional Republic.
Or so we were taught in our civics and social studies classes here in America.
The perversion of the word Democracy began with Woodrow Wilson at Princeton and subsequent progressives that have well infiltrated our schools and the minds of our young people.
William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote well about this premise and vital distinction you write about which has sadly been lost in our modern politics both here and abroad.
These Muslim nations are generations away from the West, which is something we can write about here with Wild Thing in the PC Free Zone Gazette which is American first and conservative second.
Former FOX NEWS correspondent Steve Centanni received a similar ‘Islam Is The Religion Of Peace’ ordeal in the Gaza Strip Wild Thing!
CNN’S Anderson Cooper also beaten? That sure is
‘Muslim Brotherhood’ I guess…
Awesome input thank you all so much.