This is the story of James Karl Buck, a student from the University of California-Berkley who got arrested during a trip to Mahalla, Egypt. On April 10 James and his translator, Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree were covering an anti-government protest when Egyptian police came and arrested them. The two were photographing outside a police station where the family of those who were detained asked some explanations about their relatives.

Fortunately James was able to send a one word message to another blogger friend through Twitter. The word was “Arrested“. The message alerted all his friends and bloggers in USA and Egypt.

One of the bloggers who got the message, Hossam el-Hamalawy, was writing updates on his blog to let everyone know how was James and Mohammed doing. Every couple of hours James was sending messages saying that he was still arrested but had not been charged.

On April 6 a protest against rising food prices and decreasing wages in Mahalla had been shut down by Egyptian and due to this fact the family of those who had been detained and other protesters got out on the streets and threw Molotov cocktails. They continued the protest until April 10. Then James and his translator went to Mahalla to see for themselves as James was working on a multimedia project on Egypt’s “new leftists and the blogosphere”, a part of his master’s degree thesis. He’s studying Journalism

Finally, James was set free but his translator and friend Mohammed was still detained. Officials said he was released on April 13 but nobody heard about Mohammed.