Carlos Gracia, the FIA vice-president who undertook a fact-finding mission to Bahrain before the race was reinstated, has defended his report, saying there was "complete quietness" during his visit to the Gulf country.
The FIA has come under pressure to reverse their decision to reschedule the Bahrain GP for October 30. On Tuesday F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and former FIA president Max Mosley urged motor sport's governing body to make a u-turn while the Formula One Teams' Association has also voiced their opposition to the changes that has been made to the calendar.
The FIA is yet to make any further comments on the issue, but Gracia has come in for some criticism after his seven-page report that was leaked.
Mosley told BBC Radio 4's Today that "the problem there was that they sent someone [Gracia] to look at Bahrain who speaks no English, and as far as I know speaks no Arabic.
"He was taken around by representatives of the government, of course had no knowledge of what was really going on, and above all obviously didn't ask to see the sort of people a human rights lawyer, or somebody of that kind, would have asked to see."
Gracia, who is president of the Spanish motor sport federation, has hit back though.
"I can only speak about what I saw and that was complete quietness," he is quoted in Spain's AS newspaper.
"I had official visits and interviews, but I also walked down the street and I was in shopping centres, always with a feeling of complete normality. There were people shopping or working. Nothing that caught my attention."
He added: "What I found was an open government that offers the opposition the chance to speak."
Avaaz, a group that promotes activism on human rights, has called the FIA report a "sham".
"Reading the FIA's Bahrain report is like stepping into the Twilight Zone," its executive director Ricken Patel said in a statement.
"While FIA's sham report says that no human rights have been violated, at least 31 Bahrain citizens have been killed and hundreds more tortured and imprisoned.
"Formula 1 based their decision to race in Bahrain on this dangerously irresponsible report, a decision now universally opposed by the F1 teams.
"Formula 1 must pull out of Bahrain immediately or have their reputation forever tarnished."
The statement added that Gracia "did not confer with credible human rights groups, and did not talk with injured people, torture victims, or families of the people who have died".
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