Ten months after being gunned down and left for dead in the Riyadh district of Al-Suwaidi I am still coming to terms with what happened. We were deliberately ambushed by at least five jihadis who shot us at point blank range, killing my Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers and shooting me several times in the back then leaving me dying in the street. Were we led into a trap? The investigators think not. If someone had been waiting for us then it is odd that they should wait 30 minutes, until we were packing up to leave, before attacking us. My cameraman and I both made phone calls that day but most of our calls were to the UK and neither of us spoke to anyone likely to know any jihadis. We were not big risk-takers or “flak-jacket journalists”, we simply asked the Ministry of Information for permission to film on the edge of Al-Suwaidi to illustrate a general area where there had been shoot-outs in the past. They provided us with an unarmed escort — a driver and a minder — who clearly had no idea how much danger we were all about to face.
After the shooting I lay for some time in the street, screaming in agony, while local bystanders came to look at me from a distance. After the enormous amount of kindness and hospitality I have experienced all over the Muslim world it was a shock to see nobody offering to help at first. When the police arrived they did their best, lifting me into the back of one of their patrol cars then driving me off at speed to the Al-Iman hospital where my screams for painkillers were answered. But as I passed into sedation my body was closing down. The six bullets had wreaked mortal damage on my body and I was close to death. But then, just in time, Riyadh Governor Prince Salman, and British Ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles intervened. They arranged for a team of top surgeons from the King Faisal Specialist Hospital to rush to my rescue. I owe them my life. Together they brought me back from the brink of death, pumping me full of miracle drugs that would not have been available in most British hospitals.
Does anyone know who shot us and why? Yes. The investigators — both British and Saudi — believe the men were from the small but violent organization that calls itself “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular” (AQAP). The Ministry of Interior believes at least two of our attackers were killed in shootouts with the security forces last year. They believe the cell was linked to the one that raided Alkhobar the week before and was directed by the AQAP leader, Abdul Aziz Al-Muqrin, who was also killed last year. I have not seen any explanation as to why we were attacked but presumably it was to help scare Westerners into leaving the Kingdom and embarrass the government. With me, they scored something of an own goal. As one of the very few Western broadcasters to bother to explain to English-speaking audiences what Al-Qaeda is all about, I was taken off air for nearly a year. As a graduate in Arabic & Islamic Studies I have been saddened that my 25 years of interest and love for the Arab world should be rewarded by a bellyful of bullets. But of course I know that the people who carried out this senseless crime are not representative of either Arabs or Muslims. One of the things that has cheered me up most in hospital is the great number of messages of support from Muslims all over the world. Even this paper’s editor, with whom I was due to have dinner the night I got shot (sorry Khaled, something came up) rushed to the Haram with his wife to pray for my survival.
Despite this terrifying experience I still have a wealth of good memories from my 16 years of travels in the Kingdom, from paragliding off Jebel Sarawat, to birdwatching on the Farasan Islands, from filming the restoration of Jeddah’s old balad quarter to sampling dates in an oasis in Hofuf. Best of all have been the friendships I have struck up using my Arabic, with ordinary, kind and hospitable Saudis. These are the people I wish to remember the Kingdom by, not the bloodthirsty killers who shot me.
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(Frank Gardner is the security correspondent for the BBC. He is based in London.)
