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In a powerful Op-Ed about press freedom published Monday, the publisher of The New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, mentioned my hasty departure from Egypt on a muggy August evening a couple of years ago.

It started with a phone call from The Times’s international editor, Michael Slackman, to discuss an alarming confidential warning the paper had received from an American official in Washington.

The New York Times Magazine had earlier published my article about the death of Giulio Regeni, an Italian student whose body had been found in Cairo with torture marks. The article cited American officials who linked the killing to Egypt’s security services.