Saudi 'Sportswashing' Billions Can't Cleanse the Brutal Truth

GROTESQUE DISTRACTIONS: Bebe Rexha and David Guetta perform during the Fifa Club World Cup 2023 final at the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium in Saudi Arabia, December 2023

Morning Star UK : From golf and football to Formula One, the kingdom uses unprecedented investments in global sport to divert attention from its persecution of journalists, dissidents and women, write BELLA KATZ and ROGER McKENZIE.

THE phrase a man walks into a consulate could be the beginning of some sort of distasteful joke. But this is no joke. Back in October 2018, Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi did in fact walk into his country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey to obtain documents he needed for his forthcoming marriage. He never walked out.

Instead, he was murdered on what a United States intelligence report asserted was the direct order of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Biden administration went so far as to say the crown prince approved a plan to either “capture or kill” what for the Saudi regime was more than a troublesome journalist.

The US was so vexed by the killing that they slapped sanctions on dozens of Saudis but, bizarrely, since they said the killing was a direct order, not on the crown prince himself. Of course, the Saudis reject the accusation that they had anything to do with the killing. It would of course be wrong to think that it is only a recent tactic to divert attention from their appalling human rights record. Far from it. This has been going on for years and started way before the killing of Khashoggi.

The Saudi regime has a reputation for being brutal in cracking down on freedom of expression. Last year the Saudis convicted teacher Asaad al-Ghamdi for a number of offences related to his peaceful expression of opinion online. He is the brother of Mohammed al-Ghamdi, a retired Saudi teacher, who was sentenced to death in 2023 for some of his posts on social media and YouTube.

Read it all here......