In return for Newcastle United, perhaps the Saudis can tell us where Khashoggi’s dismembered body lies

The only truly non-political sports I’ve ever heard of were the Christmas football matches played between British and German troops on the western front, says Robert Fisk

Newcastle United is set to be sold to a Saudi Arabia consortium for £300m (Reuters)

What is it about dictators, autocrats, tyrants – and, of course, extremely moderate and democratic young princes – who become addicted to sport? Is it really “sports washing” that attracts them: the idea that you can buy your way out of sin or even a bit of body-chopping by supporting football teams, racing drivers or athletes? Can the Olympics, Formula One or the English Premier League really matter that much when you have Patriot missiles, Heinkels, US-made cluster bombs, Roman legions or UK-manufactured fighter-bombers to defend you?

There must be something in the whole fandango that captures the imagination of despots. I need hardly mention the games at the Colosseum, when emperors paid good sestertii for the ferocious deaths of gladiators, Christians and countless innocent lions. Nor the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin, where Hitler even briefly abandoned antisemitism to “sports wash” the Nazis. As one German party newspaper put it at the time: “We must be more charming that the Parisians, more easygoing than the Viennese, more vivacious than the Romans, more cosmopolitan than London and more practical than New York.” The Soviet Union was pretty adept at turning sport into the imprimatur of communism, its Moscow football teams Spartak and Dynamo into princes of socialism.

I still remember the ultimate sport wash. Jimmy Carter had primly boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics because Leonid Brezhnev had just invaded Afghanistan, and prowling around Kabul airport early that year I spotted an Aeroflot plane pulling to a halt in front of the terminal. Just below the flight deck was a painting of the cosy, cuddly little brown bear – Misha was its name – which the Russians had decided should be the lovable mascot of the games.

But when the steps were pulled up to the aircraft and the passenger door opened, out trooped dozens of Soviet soldiers, wearing military camouflage uniforms, fur caps, the lot. And they were not competing in the long jump – though that, politically, is what it turned out to be.

Far be it for me, of course, to suggest that Saudi Arabia’s interest in taking an 80 per cent stake in Newcastle United means that it wants us to forget its assault on Yemen, a bombing campaign which is now estimated to have killed or wounded more than 17,000 civilians. Or that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose kingdom has since 2016 hosted international boxing and motor racing events – he is, after all, the inventor of Saudi Arabia’s “Sports Development Fund” – hopes to push out of our collective memories that little matter of Jamal Khashoggi, whose trip to the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul ended in murder most foul and dismemberment unmentionable.

The crown prince has denied any personal role in such shenanigans; but that has not, needless to say, assuaged the anger of Jamal’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. For she has very inconveniently called on the Premier League to stop the Saudi acquisition of Newcastle United on the grounds that this would tarnish English football and make it complicit in the all too public cover-up of the Saudi journalist’s murder in Istanbul. Her lawyer, Rodney Dixon – an old Middle East hand, by the way – says that the proposed purchase is “an attempt to evade justice … for an unconscionable act” which would ruin the league’s reputation.

“Reputation”, of course, is what it’s all about. So now let’s take a trip down memory lane, all of eight years, to the Formula One races in Bahrain. Remember the plucky little island monarchy, whose minority Sunni Muslim royal family crushed a majority Shia Muslim demand for democracy in 2011? Bahrain, like Saudi Arabia, is another intimate friend of the west and is headquarters to the US Fifth Fleet and a base for the royal navy.

No sooner had Bahrain recovered from its premature uprising – lots of shooting, some torture, a few deaths in Bahraini police custody, eventually put down with the help of Saudi troops – than it was time for the Formula One chaps to show off their racing skills on the island. It was an opera bouffe laid on by the royal family and its retainers to persuade the world, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Bahrain was just an ordinary, freedom-loving, peaceful little kingdom in the Orient. And its normality would be demonstrated by the holding of the 2012 Bahrain Grand Prix. As the al-Khalifa ruling family insisted, sport was surely above politics. (Newcastle United, please note.)

And they had nothing to worry about. Those kings of motor racing, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, were only in it for the sport, they announced. “I think it’s [the previous year’s rising] a lot of hype,” declared German driver Sebastian Vettel. The Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone said it was “business as usual,” arguing that “the press should just be quiet and deal with the facts rather than make up stories” – as if the death and torture of protestors in Bahrain was fiction.

Newcastle United fans – who may or may not care about the fate of poor Jamal Khashoggi and the sorrow of his fiancee – could perhaps take some comfort that Qatar, another country in the Gulf which is not exactly blossoming with democracy, is to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup. Of course, compared to Saudi Arabia, Qatar is a liberal democracy; right now it’s still subject to a boycott by the Saudis because Al Jazeera television enrages the rest of the Gulf princedoms and because Qatar maintains good relations with Iran. Officially, the Saudis and their allies object to Qatar’s “support for terrorism”.

Personally, the only truly non-political sports I’ve ever heard of were the football matches played between British and German troops on the western front during the unofficial ceasefire over Christmas 1914. To the fury of their military hierarchies, the Brits and the Fritzes kicked footballs around and shared a few bottles of beer and schnapps, acted in fact like any normal sports-loving young men. Then the high commands put a stop to all this nonsense and told them their job was to kill the other side, not play football with them.

Well, at least during their football “truce” the soldiers got to disinter their dead comrades from the mud of No Man’s Land and give them a decent burial. No such luck for Jamal Khashoggi. Even the Saudis, who admit their agents murdered him, cannot – or will not – tell the world where his sawn-up body parts now lie.

Maybe that would be a good deal for the Newcastle lads when they admire the colour of Saudi money: 80 per cent of the club is theirs – in return for the corpse of Jamal Khashoggi.