4 February 2012 - Mansour Street - Downtown Cairo. The flag waver, who is surrounded by an acrid mist of tear gas, was said to have been a relative of one of 27 Christian demonstrators who died at Maspero on Sunday 9 October 2011, fourteen of them crushed by military vehicles.

You will notice the Islamic Crescent and the Christian Cross drawn together on the Egyptian flag - to the other side of the central Eagle is the Arabic letter Y which taken together can be read as indicating "Egyptian" - the inference being that Christians and Muslims are first and foremost all Egyptians.

The Maspero demonstration had been provoked by the demolition of a church in Aswan but as a crowd of 10,000 Christians and Muslim sympathisers peacefully protested in downtown Cairo they were attacked by soldiers in armoured vehicles and by a hostile crowd.

When this photo was taken the flag waver was taking part in another anti-government demonstration. This time security forces resorted to tear gas to disperse the protesters who had gathered near Egypt's feared Ministry of Interior.

They were demanding an investigation into the perceived complicity of security forces in the death of 72 Ahly football supporters at Port Said stadium on 1st February 2012.

The photo is one of the last I took during protests and uploaded to Flickr on the day before I was arrested.