Brother of man executed by Saudi Arabia says F1 legitimises ‘heinous crimes’

The brother of a man executed by the Saudi Arabian authorities last year has accused Formula One of being complicit in “heinous crimes” perpetrated by the state, which he insists is using F1 to sportswash an increasingly oppressive crackdown on dissent.

When F1 returns to the Jeddah circuit this weekend it will be just over a year since the Saudi state executed 81 men in one day, shortly before last year’s grand prix. Afterwards the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, reported the UN believed that, of the 81 convicted of “terror offences”, 41 were from the Shia minority who had taken part in anti-government protests, calling for greater political participation.

Mustafa al-Khayyat was one of the 81 men. On Thursday his brother Yasser al-Khayyat wrote to the F1 chief executive, Stefano Domenicali, asserting that he had been executed for nothing more than taking part in pro-democracy protests and argued that F1’s presence in the Kingdom had emboldened the authorities to act brutally and without compunction.

“They use the spectacle of this sporting championship to distract from the murder of my brother and hundreds of others,” he wrote. “The grand prix carrying on as normal, without even mentioning the atrocities that have just been committed on that same soil, legitimises these heinous crimes.

“Silence is complicity. It is how the regime gets away with its atrocities and suppresses calls for democratic reforms. If you truly want Formula One to be an agent for change, rather than a tool to ‘sportswash’ Saudi abuses, please end Formula One’s silence.”

Khayyat was moved to write to Domenicali after the Italian extensively put his case to the Guardian that F1 could affect positive change in repressive