The Boys Are Back In Town! Three students captured in Cairo are now back home

Christmas came early for the families of 19-year-old Georgetown University Student Derrik Sweeney, Gregory Porter, 19, from Drexel University and 21-year-old Luke Gates of Indiana University who have been held hostage in Egypt for the last week. The three students were arrested “amid Cairo’s tumultuous protests” according to CBS.

Porter, Sweeney and Gates were arrested following accusations of throwing firebombs at Egyptian authorities from the rooftop of a University. However, Sweeney tells the Associated Press, these accusations were “very clearly just lies, 100 percent.”

“The first night was probably the scariest night of my life ever. I was not sure I was going to live. They said if we moved at all, even an inch, they would shoot us. They were behind us with guns.”

It wasn’t all inhumane, however.

“There was really marked treatment between the first night and the next three nights or however long it was. The first night, it was kind of rough. They were hitting us; they were saying they were going to shoot us and they were putting us in really uncomfortable positions. But after that first night, we were treated in a just manner — as a prisoner — we were given food when we needed and it was OK after that first night,” Sweeney told the AP.