BALTIMORE – Michael Riecken got out of Egypt at precisely the right time.
Riecken, a 23-year-old senior at Johns Hopkins University majoring in Near Eastern studies, was part of a team working on an archaeological dig in Luxor when pro-democracy protests broke out in Cairo, Egypt’s capital.
But Riecken and a fellow Johns Hopkins undergraduate didn’t need to be evacuated. They already had planned to leave last Friday, and their travel plans weren’t disrupted. Riecken spent Thursday night at a hotel in Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, and he didn’t see any of the demonstrations firsthand, relying instead on news accounts.
“There was never a point that I didn’t feel safe in Egypt,” Riecken told The Associated Press by phone Monday as he drove from his parents’ home in Plainfield, N.J., to the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore.
Still, Riecken said he agreed with the decisions by Johns Hopkins and other universities in the mid-Atlantic region to evacuate their students amid the weeklong protests, which could topple Egypt’s government. The remaining members of the archaeological team including a professor and several graduate students were scheduled to depart on charter flights Tuesday.
Egyptian police initially clashed with protesters but then virtually vanished from the streets on Friday, prompting a wave of looting, armed robbery and arson. The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
The Egyptian military said Monday it would not use force against protesters, and the streets were calmer amid calls from opposition leaders for even larger protests.
