AMY GOODMAN: Had they handcuffed you by now?

NICOLE SALAZAR: Yes, they had put me in those plastic cuffs, and my hands were behind my back. And my camera was, you know, two feet away from my face, lying on the ground. And I think shortly thereafter one officer came over and picked up the camera and took out the battery. And at that point I was worried that they were going to take my tape, but I don’t think—I mean, they didn’t, because now we have the tape, but he did take the battery out, I guess so the camera wouldn’t be recording.

AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, where were you when all of this was happening?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, I was with Nicole the entire time while we were following the protesters and the cops in the streets. And Nicole gave a very good description of what happened. But basically, it seemed like the police were—they formed a perpendicular line and were pushing back most of the protesters, and on a perpendicular street were doing the same, and basically corralled everyone on that parking lot, which is on Jackson between 7th and 9th. And once they had most people in the parking lot, they just rushed it.

AMY GOODMAN: So it was like a pincer move, where they came in from all directions.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: You couldn’t escape.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And they kept—

AMY GOODMAN: You asked one of the police officers, by the way, Nicole, how can you get out?

NICOLE SALAZAR: Right, right.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did he say?

NICOLE SALAZAR: He didn’t—he didn’t respond to me. I just said, “How can I get out?” because I was moving backwards into those cars, and I said, you know, “Where am I supposed to go?” And at that point, they just, you know, totally rushed me and knocked me down.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And, I mean, this isn’t like a, you know, a conversation you’re having with just a person. This is a cop in full riot gear. These are pretty big guys, generally, and they’re screaming at you to move.

And so, what happened was, they rushed the parking lot. Everyone in the parking lot was subject to arrest. They just rushed in. And Nicole very bravely was there filming the protesters. And you see that she gets tackled down very violently.

I was just on the outskirts of that, and I saw what had happened. So I ran in. I was holding a microphone. So I held it, you know, above my head with my left hand high to pose no threat. I held—I had a Democracy Now! press pass, as well as an RNC press pass, which gave me access to inside the convention, which is a hard one to get. You know, you have to get vetted through your Social Security number to get that one, so it’s a higher-degree press pass, as well. Anyway, I was holding my Democracy Now! one and screaming, “She’s press! She’s my co-worker! Let her go!”

And then, when I was doing that, three—two or three police officers tackled me. They threw me very violently against a wall. Then they threw me to the ground. I was kicked in the chest several times. A police officer ground his knee into my back. And I was handcuffed with plastic handcuffs. And I was also, the entire time, telling them, “I’m media. I’m press. I’m credentialed. I’m an accredited journalist.” But there was no—that didn’t seem to matter at all.

I looked over, saw Nicole on the floor on her stomach with her hands cuffed behind her back. I yelled over to her, and I saw her face was completely bloodied. This entire time, I kept telling them to let us go.

There was a photographer right next to me who was also taken down pretty violently. He was screaming he was press, as well. He had credentials. He kept saying he was a photographer for the New York Post. And quite funnily, he said, “For Christ’s sake, it’s a Republican paper!” But that didn’t seem to matter.

And then, that was it. You know, we were—we slowly got processed. We all got pushed over to the other wall opposite. They lined us up. I kept asking for them to bring Nicole to me, but they refused. And then I looked up, and I saw you walking towards me in handcuffs.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I had gotten the call—I was—I had just been interviewing someone in the Alaska delegation on the floor of the convention at the Xcel Energy Center and making my way over to Minnesota, where we are now, the Minnesota delegation. And as I was talking to someone, I got the call from Mike Burke, from Mike, who was also on the scene, said, “I believe that Sharif and Nicole have just been arrested.” So I was with Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films. We were filming delegate interviews. I had just talked to a veteran from Virginia.

We raced out and just ran down the street. I even stopped a police officer. I said, “Get me to that site. Our reporters have been arrested.” But he didn’t comply. But we were running as fast as we could, and the police had blocked off different areas of St. Paul, so we had to even run more of a detour. We kept running down the street. Finally, we made our way. I had, of course, my credentials flying, because you have the top security credential to be on the convention floor, then our Democracy Now! credential.

Finally, I made it to the police line, where the police in riot gear were lined up. I asked to speak to a commanding officer. They immediately grabbed me. I said, “Sir, I just want to speak to a commanding officer. My reporters are inside.” They’ve got their ID. I mean, we’ve done this in New York, as well, when there is confusion about a reporter. They immediately grabbed me, handcuffed me—and as you haven’t quite talked about, those plastic handcuffs cut right into your wrist, and they make those tight—pushed me to the ground.

I kept demanding—I saw you across the way, Sharif. I was looking for you, Nicole. They said you were bloodied. I demanded to be able to see you. I couldn’t find you. I demanded to be brought over to Sharif. I did go over to be with Sharif. They took my picture. They put the big white plaque under me with all my information, and an officer stands there with the picture. I kept demanding to see the reporters asking why we were being arrested. They finally—when they put me into the police wagon, they said that Nicole, you would be there. You were one of the first arrested. And that’s where I saw you with your Democracy Now! credentials hanging around your neck.

And then we were brought off to the jail. That’s where we were separated. They have these—those who are charged with misdemeanor are put in the—they have these pens inside the police garage. So I was brought there.

As I came in and I was speaking to the corrections officers, who did identify themselves—I kept asking every officer to identify themselves—a St. Paul cop behind them kept screaming, “Shut up! You, shut up!” And I asked—I said, “I want to know what your name is or your badge.” “Shut up! Shut up!” he said, I think to the chagrin of the corrections officers. One of the head guys in the jail came over and said, “He’s not ours. We can’t force him to identify himself. Our policy is that they identify themselves.” And stayed there for several hours.

Ultimately, they released me, interference with, I think they said, the judicial process or with a peace officer. They had—I thought you were going to come in with me, but they said you were brought to jail. So where were you, Nicole?

NICOLE SALAZAR: Well, first of all, one thing that you just left out from the paddy wagon that I just want to recall is when you and I were both banging on the glass, and we said, you know, “We’re press! We’re press!” Their response to that was, you know, to tell each other the two people in there were not being cooperative. So I just wanted to—

AMY GOODMAN: That’s right. He said, “We’ve got to get out of here, because two people are getting increasingly uncooperative.”

I also said to an officer, “I demand to see Nicole Salazar, because her face is bloodied.” And he said, “Listen, I’ve been knifed in my life.” I said, “Yes, but we’re not responsible for that, though I’m sorry that that happened to you. But this happened because of you, sir.”

NICOLE SALAZAR: Right. So then, in the prison, after I came out of the wagon—I came after, right after you—there was one officer who was videotaping all of us coming down off the stairs. And I asked him for his badge number, and he said he didn’t have a badge. And I asked him for his name, and he wouldn’t give it to me.

But I saw you go through the double doors, and, you know, I was thinking I would be right behind you. But when I got inside the main area of the prison, I didn’t see you. You know, instead, they sort of search you, just, you know, a regular search. And then they make you go through a metal detector. And at that point I was put into a cell, which I later measured to be about nine by eleven paces. And I was in there with seventeen other—seventeen protesters who had been also arrested that day. Some of them were still soaked with, you know, pepper spray, and their skin was burning, and they were asking for a nurse. But in the time that I was in there with them, they didn’t get to see anybody.

AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, where were you put?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: I was taken to prison, as well. But I think one thing that was left out also in the story, and I think this happened to you, as well, Amy, was that while we were standing waiting to be processed and put on the bus, I was standing there with three credentials around my neck: my Democracy Now! press pass, which has my picture; the RNC press one, which gets you inside the convention; and a separate one, which I was supposed to put on Nicole, but I never actually did, was a limited RNC press one. A man walked up to me, who was not in uniform of St. Paul or Minneapolis police—I was later told he was Secret Service—came up and looked at my RNC press badge, said, “What is this?” I said, “It’s my pass to get inside the Xcel Center.” He said, “Well, you won’t be needing that to go—you’re not going to be going inside the convention center today,” and took it and walked off. I immediately protested. I said, “I want this around my neck to prove I’m an accredited journalist to go inside the convention center.” And he said, “You won’t be needing it today,” walked off.

I asked my arresting officer, who incidentally was not my arresting officer—they just assigned some guy to take the picture of me and process me—he said, “I don’t know who that guy is. He looks like Secret Service.” I said, “Well, why don’t you acknowledge that this was taken, witness it somehow?” And he refused to do so. And I believe they did the same to you. They took that pass off your neck.

AMY GOODMAN: Right. The Secret Service came up, and they—he ripped it off of my neck.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And I said, “That is my pass. I want a receipt that you have taken that.” But of course, they didn’t give it.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And then, once I was put on the bus, as well—and just to reiterate what you were saying, while I was being arrested, I was, you know, slammed violently. I got scratches on my elbow and bruises on my chest and back. But the most painful part of it was these plastic handcuffs. They were extremely tight. Getting onto the bus, I asked one of the officers, I said, “Can you just cut these off and put on new ones?” because you can’t loosen those. And his response to that was to grab them and tighten them. So it was very painful on the way. I actually still don’t have feeling in part of my hand. So—

AMY GOODMAN: The same with mine. In fact, when they took mine off and put on new ones, they also were tighter.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And they kept saying they’re not tight. And I kept saying, “No, they’re digging in.”

And so, I think the other major issue is the level of harassment of the press, and we’re seeing it increasingly. Of course, we just came out of Saturday, where we raced from the airport, got a text that I-Witness Video, which did such a remarkable job as the New York Police Department will also admit, documenting what happened in 2004 at the RNC, the I-Witness Video collective was in a house in St. Paul. They just arrived, beginning to organize their week of documenting what was happening here. And there was a preemptive raid in the house. They didn’t even have a warrant for this house. They had a warrant for the house next door. And the police moved in, and we documented all of that. I have to say, when I was inside the jail next to the pens, I asked one of the St. Paul cops what he thought about these preemptive raids. He said, “Awesome! Awesome!”

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, that’s another thing. And I said—I kept saying—they kept asking me, “What are you doing here? Why are you here?” I said, “We’re press. We’re here to bear witness to what’s going on, and that’s why we’re in the streets.” And he kept saying, “Oh, you should use a telescopic lens,” or, “You know, when it gets rowdy, you should just stay behind the corner.” I said, “No, that’s not what we’re here to do. You need to respect the fact that we’re media. If someone’s carrying a camera, you don’t tackle them to the floor.” And this is respected widely in most of the world, but there seems to have been, in this country, a violation of that separation, and media are treated very badly, frankly. And this—it seems to be getting worse, especially in this RNC, with these preemptive raids, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: And what they call these, quote, “national security events.” Well, I’m very glad you’re out of jail. Nicole went to the hospital last night. Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, for being there, doing your job. Sharif?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: I’d just like to thank all the producers here who helped us while we were inside, putting out the word to all the media—they were constantly doing interviews, they put out a press release—and just to thank everyone who called in. Apparently the jail got many, many calls, they said over a thousand, and I’m sure that helped secure our release. We both have pending felony charges and were released that night. So, just a big thank you to everyone.

AMY GOODMAN: One of those who weighed in was Congress member Keith Ellison of Minneapolis. He’s going to join us in a minute, and then we’re going to talk about what happened in New Orleans. Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, thanks so much for doing your job.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Thank you, Amy.

NICOLE SALAZAR: Thanks, Amy.

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/

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