File:A Tahrir Square Fight Below My Hotel Window. (6633006025).jpg

19 July 2011. Photo taken looking down from the City View Hotel which overlooks the northern approach to Tahrir Square. In another photograph I have on file you can see the man wearing the straw hat wield a shovel.

Fights regularly broke out in the Square where it was unclear exactly who was fighting who. Usually one side involved either unwanted traders, "unwelcome women" (as possible in this case) or suspected spies or criminals (baltigaya).

Although suspicions were often ill founded, the cause of many fights can be attributed to the large number of infiltrators paid by the MInistry of Interior both to discover the aims of the Tahrir Square demonstrators and also to commit criminal acts that would bring disrepute on the protest movement. This in turn fed suspicions and an increasing degree of paranoia - which was probably exactly what was intended by those in power.

The first time I ever heard anything about this was as early as February 2011 when I was stopped at the army check point after passing Qasr El Nil Bridge and warned that "there are a large number of government agents in the Square" before being asked if I really wanted to enter to which I replied "yes" and was then allowed through.

I realise that such a conversation sounds quite bizarre - perhaps the officer intended to scare me but by the way he asked me I felt he was just trying to help - suggesting perhaps that I be on my guard. Hopefully he passed on the same advice to Egyptians.

Proof that informants were at work came for me late in 2011 when I remember spotting a man who I had previously seen ten years previously acting as a police agent during an early police raid on a floating discotheque - the Queen Boat.

This was not the more infamous event in which 50 men were charged with "debauchery" but nevertheless a large number of gay men were detained ( I don't know whether any were subsequently charged ) and I witnessed one being kicked and beaten by uniformed police officers on the corniche.

As men left the discotheque this informant had pointed out those he believed to be gay based on his own contacts and observations inside the club.

Now this same man was befriending Egyptians in the Square. I was immediately suspicious and warned people and only a couple of hours later I spotted him talking to police officers only a few hundred metres away in Medan Talaat Harb.