RIYADH, 27 June 2004 — BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, who was shot in the stomach and seriously injured while filming the home of a suspected Al-Qaeda member here on June 6, was flown back to Britain amid tight security on Thursday.
He arrived in London and is making good progress, the BBC said.
Gardner, 42, an Arabic speaker, is the network’s security correspondent. His cameraman, Simon Cumbers, was killed when an unidentified assailant in a passing vehicle sprayed the team with an automatic weapon.
Gardner was taken home in a medical evacuation aircraft belonging to the Riyadh Armed Forces Hospital accompanied by his wife Amanda.
“Gardner was found fit to travel to London and the doctors said his condition was stable,” a spokesman at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital told Arab News. Gardner was taken to the aircraft on a stretcher, he added.
“Gardner was in the ICU of the hospital for 16 days before he was taken home, where he has been admitted to a hospital for further treatment,” the spokesman said.
He added Gardner underwent a series of operations since he was admitted to the hospital with several bullets in his body.
Amanda Gardner in a statement said, “I am extremely grateful to the Saudi government for facilitating Frank’s medical treatment in Riyadh, and for arranging for him to be flown back to the UK.”
“I also want to express my heartfelt thanks to all the doctors and medical staff at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh, without whose skill and care Frank’s recovery would not have been possible,” she added.
Gardner is a leading expert on Al-Qaeda and reports full-time on the “war on terror”. He has many years’ experience working in Middle East as a journalist and has worked with the BBC since 1995.
He also spent nine years working in and around the region as an investment banker with Saudi International Bank and Robert Fleming from 1986-95.
Gardner has two young daughters — Melissa, six, and Sasha, five. Amanda Gardner earlier said she would never try to stop her husband from returning to the Middle East.
“He loves the Middle East so much and feels so comfortable with people from the Middle East that I couldn’t imagine I could ever say anything that would stop him from coming... He was born to be a journalist,” she said.
Meanwhile, Cumbers’ widow, Louise Bevan, told the BBC that a private funeral is to be held for him in his hometown of Navan, County Meath, Ireland on Tuesday.
