'Saudi regime executed my brother - think of him as Newcastle play at Wembley'
Last March, my brother Mustafa al-Khayat was executed by the Saudi Arabian government. The same regime that owns Newcastle United Football Club. I will be thinking of him when they play in the Carabao Cup final this Sunday, their success fuelled by Saudi blood money.
Mustafa was killed alongside 80 other men, in the largest mass execution in the country’s modern history. My family was not even told the execution would take place; we found out he was dead in a newspaper.
We were not given the chance to say goodbye and we don’t know where his body is, or how he was buried. We are still mourning his death. When you lose a family member like this, it is hard to ever move on from the tragedy.
It is even harder to move on when you know the world is turning a blind eye to the deaths of people like Mustafa in Saudi Arabia. When the Newcastle United team walk out at Wembley this weekend will they think of those murdered by the people paying their salaries? Will they feel any shame that they have not spoken out about the executions?
My brother was sentenced to death as punishment for joining protests calling for basic democratic freedoms that the Newcastle team enjoy living in Britain. He was standing up for the very human rights that were denied him when he was arrested alongside dozens of other men, tortured, forced to confess to crimes he didn’t commit, imprisoned for eight years and then executed in secret.
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His death sentence was not automatic, or mandated in Islamic law: it was at the discretion of the Saudi judiciary, which is theoretically independent but in practice does the bidding of the ruling family. We have seen, many times, that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman decides who lives or dies. His regime uses the death penalty as a weapon of revenge and intimidation against those who call out its crimes.
Mustafa al-Khayat was executed last March‘Sportswashing’ is used to cover up those crimes. If no one speaks out on Newcastle United being owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, then it legitimises the regime. If big football and boxing stars sign multi-million dollar contracts to play for teams in Saudi Arabia or host events there, it paints the country in a positive light and hides its murderous actions. It sends a message to Mohammed bin Salman that he can kill without consequences.
Mustafa was one of at least 147 people executed by Saudi Arabia last year. According to the human rights charity Reprieve, the number of executions each year has almost doubled under the leadership of King Salman and the Crown Prince.
It has become an execution epidemic fuelled by their bloodthirstiness, paranoia and desire to maintain their absolute power. More than 1,000 people have been executed since they came to power seven years ago.
Newcastle fans will flock to Wembley to watch their side in the Carabao Cup final (Getty Images)Mustafa was just one of those 1000 people, but he is more than a number to me, and to so many others. He was my younger brother, and he was always smiling and cracking jokes. He was a good man, he was known for his calmness, and he volunteered in his local community.
He liked to run into the sea, to lift weights, and he bred birds as a hobby. Everyone loved him, all our relatives and our neighbours, and when he got involved in demonstrations against the government, he was standing up for the rights of all of them.
He would sit with a group of friends in a park to make plans to go to the protests and discuss what they would chant and what slogans they would use. It was in that park that he and all of the others there were seized and arrested in 2014.
Each execution leaves behind family, friends and neighbours searching for answers. So many people have been executed without any process of justice.
Mohammed bin Salman is the chairman of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund - who own 80% of Newcastle (AFP via Getty Images)So many have been killed without saying goodbye. So many families have been denied the dignity of a proper burial. And still the world looks away, unwilling to confront a regime throwing around money across the world to burnish its reputation.
Eddie Howe and the Newcastle players could speak out this weekend, on the biggest of stages, and tell the world Saudi Arabian executions are not in their name.
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There are Newcastle fans who are already doing this and it is time for senior members of Newcastle United to do the same. It would be a first step towards achieving justice for the victims of the Saudi regime.
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