IHIF Announces Keynote Speaker
BBC Correspondent Frank Gardner to do Keynote at International Hotel Investment Forum Berlin
FEBRUARY 2, 2007. Frank Gardner, the BBC's fulltime security correspondent reporting for TV and radio on issues of international security, will be the keynote speaker at the International Hotel Investment Forum (IHIF), scheduled for 5-7 March 2007 at the InterContinental Berlin in Berlin, Germany. IHIF is hosted by Questex Media and Burba Hotel Network (BHN), with organizational support provided by The Bench.
Gardner was awarded an OBE in June 2005 for services to journalism. In 2004, he survived being shot six times at close range by Al Qaeda terrorists in the Riyadh suburb, Saudi Arabia. Gardner's miraculous survival was most likely due to a small Qur'an he was carrying with him. After many months in hospital, Gardner returned to the BBC and his reporting duties. He has reported extensively on the "War on Terror" in Guantanamo Bay, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Frank's book, Blood and Sand, was published in May 2006 by Transworld. It provides a snapshot of the Middle East over a number of years and the poignant story of what can happen to your belief system when the culture you have embraced ends up trying to kill you.
About Gardner's upcoming keynote address to IHIF delegates, Jonathan Worsley chairman of The Bench said, "Frank Gardner will inspire us with his talk on his travels throughout the Middle East where he visited remote peoples and places that few have encountered. It is extraordinary that he is alive today to tell of his personal story and to convey his deep understanding of the Islamic world."
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