Via qwghlm's twitter feed, here's a rough but serviceable translation of an eyewitness account of yesterday's disaster at the football in Port Said, from an Ahly fan:
The moment the referee whistled to declare the ending of the game, the pitch was attacked in a very bizarre way from two sides; one towards the players to hit them and the other towards the “Ahly” fans in the bleachers. At this very same moment the lights went off and the stadium turned black, at that time there were two CSF security cordons along the “Ahly” bleachers and all of a sudden the cordon was opened for the “Masry” fans to go up the bleachers and attack the “Ahly” fans.
They went from the bleachers’ bottom doors that were open and went up very easily in huge numbers; not less than 2000/3000. We were in shock that the police let them do that very easily and that such large numbers are attacking us! Usually it would be swearing, fireworks and rock-throwing; it is what we do in football but that is it!
...When we saw these numbers we knew we wouldn’t be able to deal with all of them; so we started running towards the hallways that take us to the doors in order to exit the stadium. These hallways should’ve been opened for us to leave but they were closed by the army from the outside.
Now it's possible that the reason the cops let the opposing fans through was simply because there were too many to deal with, just as it's possible that the army closed the doors to stop the hostile fans waiting outside - mentioned later - from getting into the stadium. But that doesn't seem to be the way its understood across much of Egypt.
Paul Mason interviewed an Ahly ultra in his book who says that he and his mates had originally been mobilised by the security forces through the club to attack the demonstrators in Tahrir last year, but were talked round by the crowd and changed sides. So you can point to a history of collusion between fans and security elements.
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