RIYADH, 8 June 2004 — “Frank G here in Riyadh. Will you be here tmoro, Monday morning? We are leaving at 1 p.m. but we would like to meet you before we go.”
Thus read a text message from Frank Gardner to Arab News Editor in Chief Khaled Almaeena, sent only hours before he came under a hail of bullets in Riyadh’s notorious Suwaidi district.
From Alkhobar, Gardner had told Almaeena he was coming to interview him for the BBC and visit the Riyadh office of Arab News and Asharq Al-Awsat.
Almaeena rang Gardner at about 4.30 p.m. and told him that he was on his way to Riyadh.
He was here yesterday morning, but Gardner was in a coma at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital.
“When I initially learned about an incident in Suwaidi, I was a little apprehensive. But when I heard that foreign journalists were injured, I was practically in tears,” Almaeena says. He immediately rang Gardner’s mobile phone, but there was no response.
“Gardner is a good friend of mine and also a friend of Saudi Arabia,” he said. “I was very eager to see him again.”
