Jon Leyne

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Jon Leyne (1958–2013) was a BBC journalist who served as Cairo correspondent for BBC News and its 24-hour TV channels, as well as the BBC’s domestic outlets and the World Service. He worked for the BBC for almost 30 years, reporting from New York, Washington, Amman and Tehran before moving to Cairo in 2010.

He studied at Winchester College, the University of Exeter, and St Antony’s College, Oxford, where he earned an MPhil in the international response to terrorism. He joined the BBC in 1985 and commented on the 1992 Barcelona Olympics rowing and the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. He was the BBC’s United Nations Correspondent in New York from 1992 to 1994, then worked across Europe and the Middle East from 1994 to 2001, including Belfast, Kosovo, Baghdad and Basra.

In June 2001 he became the BBC’s State Department correspondent in Washington, D.C., and was near the Pentagon when 9/11 happened. He traveled with Colin Powell to Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Israel. In July 2004 he became Amman correspondent, reporting from Lebanon and Syria during the 2006 war. He later became Tehran correspondent; he was reportedly expelled, and Iran’s BBC Persian service faced disruption after the 2009 election. He covered the Palestinian uprising, the Tunisian uprisings, and witnessed a Palestinian attack in Ramallah that stalled peace talks. He reported from Libya during the 2011 civil war and the fall of Gaddafi, and he covered Mubarak’s resignation in Egypt.

In 2013 he left Cairo because of severe headaches, was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, and died in July 2013.