The crown prince of Bahrain claimed last night to be unconcerned about
Ecclestone’s labelling of the government as “stupid”. “It’s Bernie being
Bernie,” said Prince Salman bid Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. “People will know
he is being sarcastic. I have a sense of humour.”
On the subject of regimes with questionable human rights records, Ecclestone
was also pressed on whether, if Syria ever had a circuit in Damascus, he
could be persuaded to take a grand prix there. “We’ll have to take a look
and see,” he said. Dan Roan, the BBC reporter who asked the question, later
tried to insist that Formula
One’s commercial rights holder had made the remark tongue-in-cheek.
Ecclestone was withering about the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy
in Bahrain, the group of MPs led by shadow justice minister Andy Slaughter,
who have called for the grand prix to be scrapped.
He said: “MPs are really good. We see them, like, once a year. We never see
them otherwise. They suddenly pop up, which is good really, because nobody
knows who they are and they get their name in the paper.”
Just hours after Ecclestone’s dismissal of human rights concerns, there were
unconfirmed reports last night of significant disturbances in the
Shia community of Sanabis, west of Manama.
Ala’a Shehabi, leader of the group Bahrain Watch and an unofficial spokeswoman
for the protestors, described on Twitter “a scene of carnage” at the house
she was visiting. She wrote: “It’s chaos. Police have tear-gassed the house
and women have been sprayed in the faces.”