Post by Teddy Bear on Nov 23, 2014 21:23:09 GMT
This is clearly what it takes for somebody at the BBC to see these Islamists in a true light.
What a contrast to read how Gardner views these scum to any of the others there. Most think that by appeasing them they will avoid a similar fate, when in reality they are ensuring that many more innocents will die and suffer.
DIM and DHIMMI
What a contrast to read how Gardner views these scum to any of the others there. Most think that by appeasing them they will avoid a similar fate, when in reality they are ensuring that many more innocents will die and suffer.
DIM and DHIMMI
Frank Gardner: I will never forgive the terrorists who did this to me
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner’s life changed for ever when he was shot in 2004 – and, as the last of his Islamist assailiants is sentenced to be hanged, he won't be calling for a pardon
“Forgiveness is not really an option,” says Frank Gardner, who was paralysed for life when he was shot six times by a terrorist gang. His friend and cameraman was killed in the attack 10 years ago.
The last surviving member of the gang has just been sentenced to death, but the BBC security correspondent will not be calling for a pardon.
“He is completely unrepentant. He has never said sorry. He is still in the mindset that he had when he attacked us. So forgiveness is not really an option.”
Gardner is still angry – and cannot quite hide it. He speaks in the clear, measured tones that serve him so well on television and radio, but cold fury seeps through. “It’s not like this man’s parents have written to me or anyone saying, ‘Please forgive him’. No one has apologised.”
The other members of the gang have long since perished in shoot-outs or blown themselves up, but Adel Al-Dhubaiti is expected to hang for crimes against Saudi Arabia, including his part in the attack on the reporter and Simon Cumbers, his cameraman, in Riyadh in June 2004.
Gardner has been offered the chance to meet his assailant, but turned it down. “I don’t want to see this guy. Why would I? What am I going to get from it? The man’s soul is dead.”
There is no disguising the disdain. Nor the bitterness in a passing comment: “I gather he’s put on weight in jail – he has been eating quite well.”
Gardner had to endure 14 operations and almost a year in hospital before he could return to work. He has been hailed as a hero for overcoming extreme pain to broadcast from a wheelchair or standing up with the aid of calipers and a Zimmer frame. His legs are “like jelly”. So how does he feel at the news his attacker will be executed?
“I don’t feel any kind of triumphalism at all. This is no one-nil moment. Justice has been served. The court has looked at the evidence. My understanding is that he has not offered any defence for what he did. It was inexcusable.”
We are in a cubicle at Broadcasting House, which would offer privacy if his voice did not keep rising in volume and passion. People passing by cast admiring glances at the man in the steel-grey suit, who is slightly built but has a vice-like handshake.
He was once a captain in the Royal Green Jackets, as an Army reservist, but is anxious to point out that he was “a Cold War warrior who ran around Germany” and had nothing to do with any conflict in the Gulf. “We came to Saudi Arabia as completely peaceful, objective journalists to report on what was going on there. And we paid for it. Totally unfairly.”
They had just finished filming when a car pulled up. “A young man gets out and says, ‘Salaam alaikum – Peace be upon you’. But as he is saying that, he is reaching into a specially-sewn pocket in his dishdasha and pulling out a pistol.” Gardner started to run but was shot in the shoulder.
“It went straight through. It hurt like hell. I kept running. The next thing, there was another shot and I was down on the ground.”
Simon Cumbers was already dead. “I remember looking up at these horrible, evil faces. They were almost like Hallowe’en joke shop masks.”
They left him for dead. As he lay with his body smashed and contorted, Gardner was outraged. He had loved the Middle East since he was a teenager, studied Islam and Arabic at university and worked for banks in Saudi Arabia before joining the BBC, where he regularly stressed that most Muslims were kind, peace-loving people and nothing like the terrorists.
“In the horrible aftermath and the couple of hours between being shot and being saved by a brilliant surgeon, I had time to think an awful lot of thoughts. One of them was, ‘This is so bloody unfair. I go to the effort to learn this language, to understand the people, to live with them in Jordan, Bahrain, Cairo, to have a lot of respect for their beliefs and customs, and what do I get? A bellyful of bullets.”
Muslims sent Gardner many messages of support after the attack. “Like me, they thought this was totally unfair and I didn’t deserve it.”
His wife, Amanda, was at home in London with their two daughters when two BBC managers came to the door. “She was just about to read the children a bedtime story. She said, ‘Give me a moment, let me put them to bed’. Her extraordinary calm would be severely tested over the coming years. Their daughters were five and six.
The girls did not see him until weeks later, when he was in the Royal London Hospital, in the higher dependency unit. “I had attachments, wires, clusters all hanging off me. Their first reaction was to come and hug me but Amanda had to say, ‘No, you can’t touch Daddy’. That was really difficult for them. And for me.”
For seven months, his abdomen was held together by a membrane and a plastic gauze. “I could see my insides moving like a python digesting its food. It was horrible.”
The drugs they gave him for chronic long-term pain had an unexpected effect. “My daughter saw me in the bathroom stripped to the waist and said, ‘Daddy, you’re growing boobies’. I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘Right. That’s it. Cold turkey. No more medicine’.” So now he prefers to live with the pain, however intense it gets. “Every single day of my life, I am in pain. I won’t take medication for it, unless the pain is really bad. I want a clear head. Medicine saved my life, but I don’t want to be on any kind of medication permanently.”
What is the pain like? “The body vibrates for decades after the event. Even though the worst injuries are around the base of my spine, the actual injury I feel is like someone stamping on my foot. Really hard. Many times.”
Incredibly, he has taken only two days off work in nine years because of the pain. “It has to be really bad for that. Then I will literally shut myself in a room at home, preferably with the family not there, and just howl through the spasms.”
Strangely, the pain stays away when he is broadcasting. “There’s some sort of mechanism. I don’t know how it works but it says, ‘He’s on air. Let it go’.”
The many accolades and awards Gardner has been given since the attack include an OBE in 2005 for services to journalism. He is also honorary president of the Ski Club of Great Britain and uses a skibob. He continues to report from places such as Afghanistan whenever possible.
“I have to measure it carefully. I wouldn’t go to a forward operating base where everyone has to run for cover in a hurry but I would go to a big base like Bagram.”
He was frustrated not to be able to cover the Arab Spring on the ground. “I can’t be part of a fast-moving crowd scene where there is tear gas and bullets. Wheelchairs and tear gas just don’t mix.”
Does he now take a harder line in his reporting as a result of what happened? “No, if anything I have steeled myself since then to be totally objective. There are people in Syria and Iraq who prefer being under Islamic State to what they had before. If that’s the truth, we should report it.”
How has all this changed his character? “Friends say I haven’t changed a bit – my jokes are just as bad as they always were. I think it has made me more determined.
“Because I have to deal with a whole heap of c--- that able-bodied people don’t have, I have become better at telling people what I need and what I don’t need. Physically, my life has changed beyond recognition. But you roll with what you’ve got and move on.”
Gardner said on the Today programme on Tuesday that the execution of his assailant would “draw a line under the whole thing”. Will he feel a sense of closure then? “I am not looking for one, unless there is something deep in my head that I am not aware of. I have been extremely lucky not to have flashbacks, nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder. You don’t go through a horrific near-death experience without it shaking you up a bit, but writing a book about this [Blood & Sand], is immensely cathartic. The book was my closure.”
I have to press him. Does he agree with the death sentence or not? “I’m not going to celebrate or gloat at all. All that matters is that the guy should never be free on the streets because he is a danger to humanity.” Then he says: “I don’t waste any time thinking about these people, I really don’t. I have moved on.”
This is the only interview he is giving about the death sentence. Of course, he still thinks often of his friend and colleague and the adventures they could have had on assignments these last 10 years.
“The unspoken sadness is that Simon didn’t survive. I wish more than anything that he had. But at least there is justice now.”
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner’s life changed for ever when he was shot in 2004 – and, as the last of his Islamist assailiants is sentenced to be hanged, he won't be calling for a pardon
“Forgiveness is not really an option,” says Frank Gardner, who was paralysed for life when he was shot six times by a terrorist gang. His friend and cameraman was killed in the attack 10 years ago.
The last surviving member of the gang has just been sentenced to death, but the BBC security correspondent will not be calling for a pardon.
“He is completely unrepentant. He has never said sorry. He is still in the mindset that he had when he attacked us. So forgiveness is not really an option.”
Gardner is still angry – and cannot quite hide it. He speaks in the clear, measured tones that serve him so well on television and radio, but cold fury seeps through. “It’s not like this man’s parents have written to me or anyone saying, ‘Please forgive him’. No one has apologised.”
The other members of the gang have long since perished in shoot-outs or blown themselves up, but Adel Al-Dhubaiti is expected to hang for crimes against Saudi Arabia, including his part in the attack on the reporter and Simon Cumbers, his cameraman, in Riyadh in June 2004.
Gardner has been offered the chance to meet his assailant, but turned it down. “I don’t want to see this guy. Why would I? What am I going to get from it? The man’s soul is dead.”
There is no disguising the disdain. Nor the bitterness in a passing comment: “I gather he’s put on weight in jail – he has been eating quite well.”
Gardner had to endure 14 operations and almost a year in hospital before he could return to work. He has been hailed as a hero for overcoming extreme pain to broadcast from a wheelchair or standing up with the aid of calipers and a Zimmer frame. His legs are “like jelly”. So how does he feel at the news his attacker will be executed?
“I don’t feel any kind of triumphalism at all. This is no one-nil moment. Justice has been served. The court has looked at the evidence. My understanding is that he has not offered any defence for what he did. It was inexcusable.”
We are in a cubicle at Broadcasting House, which would offer privacy if his voice did not keep rising in volume and passion. People passing by cast admiring glances at the man in the steel-grey suit, who is slightly built but has a vice-like handshake.
He was once a captain in the Royal Green Jackets, as an Army reservist, but is anxious to point out that he was “a Cold War warrior who ran around Germany” and had nothing to do with any conflict in the Gulf. “We came to Saudi Arabia as completely peaceful, objective journalists to report on what was going on there. And we paid for it. Totally unfairly.”
They had just finished filming when a car pulled up. “A young man gets out and says, ‘Salaam alaikum – Peace be upon you’. But as he is saying that, he is reaching into a specially-sewn pocket in his dishdasha and pulling out a pistol.” Gardner started to run but was shot in the shoulder.
“It went straight through. It hurt like hell. I kept running. The next thing, there was another shot and I was down on the ground.”
Simon Cumbers was already dead. “I remember looking up at these horrible, evil faces. They were almost like Hallowe’en joke shop masks.”
They left him for dead. As he lay with his body smashed and contorted, Gardner was outraged. He had loved the Middle East since he was a teenager, studied Islam and Arabic at university and worked for banks in Saudi Arabia before joining the BBC, where he regularly stressed that most Muslims were kind, peace-loving people and nothing like the terrorists.
“In the horrible aftermath and the couple of hours between being shot and being saved by a brilliant surgeon, I had time to think an awful lot of thoughts. One of them was, ‘This is so bloody unfair. I go to the effort to learn this language, to understand the people, to live with them in Jordan, Bahrain, Cairo, to have a lot of respect for their beliefs and customs, and what do I get? A bellyful of bullets.”
Muslims sent Gardner many messages of support after the attack. “Like me, they thought this was totally unfair and I didn’t deserve it.”
His wife, Amanda, was at home in London with their two daughters when two BBC managers came to the door. “She was just about to read the children a bedtime story. She said, ‘Give me a moment, let me put them to bed’. Her extraordinary calm would be severely tested over the coming years. Their daughters were five and six.
The girls did not see him until weeks later, when he was in the Royal London Hospital, in the higher dependency unit. “I had attachments, wires, clusters all hanging off me. Their first reaction was to come and hug me but Amanda had to say, ‘No, you can’t touch Daddy’. That was really difficult for them. And for me.”
For seven months, his abdomen was held together by a membrane and a plastic gauze. “I could see my insides moving like a python digesting its food. It was horrible.”
The drugs they gave him for chronic long-term pain had an unexpected effect. “My daughter saw me in the bathroom stripped to the waist and said, ‘Daddy, you’re growing boobies’. I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘Right. That’s it. Cold turkey. No more medicine’.” So now he prefers to live with the pain, however intense it gets. “Every single day of my life, I am in pain. I won’t take medication for it, unless the pain is really bad. I want a clear head. Medicine saved my life, but I don’t want to be on any kind of medication permanently.”
What is the pain like? “The body vibrates for decades after the event. Even though the worst injuries are around the base of my spine, the actual injury I feel is like someone stamping on my foot. Really hard. Many times.”
Incredibly, he has taken only two days off work in nine years because of the pain. “It has to be really bad for that. Then I will literally shut myself in a room at home, preferably with the family not there, and just howl through the spasms.”
Strangely, the pain stays away when he is broadcasting. “There’s some sort of mechanism. I don’t know how it works but it says, ‘He’s on air. Let it go’.”
The many accolades and awards Gardner has been given since the attack include an OBE in 2005 for services to journalism. He is also honorary president of the Ski Club of Great Britain and uses a skibob. He continues to report from places such as Afghanistan whenever possible.
“I have to measure it carefully. I wouldn’t go to a forward operating base where everyone has to run for cover in a hurry but I would go to a big base like Bagram.”
He was frustrated not to be able to cover the Arab Spring on the ground. “I can’t be part of a fast-moving crowd scene where there is tear gas and bullets. Wheelchairs and tear gas just don’t mix.”
Does he now take a harder line in his reporting as a result of what happened? “No, if anything I have steeled myself since then to be totally objective. There are people in Syria and Iraq who prefer being under Islamic State to what they had before. If that’s the truth, we should report it.”
How has all this changed his character? “Friends say I haven’t changed a bit – my jokes are just as bad as they always were. I think it has made me more determined.
“Because I have to deal with a whole heap of c--- that able-bodied people don’t have, I have become better at telling people what I need and what I don’t need. Physically, my life has changed beyond recognition. But you roll with what you’ve got and move on.”
Gardner said on the Today programme on Tuesday that the execution of his assailant would “draw a line under the whole thing”. Will he feel a sense of closure then? “I am not looking for one, unless there is something deep in my head that I am not aware of. I have been extremely lucky not to have flashbacks, nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder. You don’t go through a horrific near-death experience without it shaking you up a bit, but writing a book about this [Blood & Sand], is immensely cathartic. The book was my closure.”
I have to press him. Does he agree with the death sentence or not? “I’m not going to celebrate or gloat at all. All that matters is that the guy should never be free on the streets because he is a danger to humanity.” Then he says: “I don’t waste any time thinking about these people, I really don’t. I have moved on.”
This is the only interview he is giving about the death sentence. Of course, he still thinks often of his friend and colleague and the adventures they could have had on assignments these last 10 years.
“The unspoken sadness is that Simon didn’t survive. I wish more than anything that he had. But at least there is justice now.”
