PARIS — Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif has filed a authorized criticism in France for on-line harassment after a rain of criticism and false claims about her intercourse throughout the Paris Olympics, her lawyer mentioned Sunday.
Khelif, who will likely be Algeria’s flag bearer within the closing ceremony, received gold Friday within the girls’s welterweight division, turning into a brand new hero in her native Algeria and bringing international consideration to girls’s boxing.
The criticism was filed Friday with a particular unit within the Paris prosecutor’s workplace for combating on-line hate speech, alleging “aggravated cyber-harassment” focusing on Khelif, lawyer Nabil Boudi mentioned. In an announcement, he described it as a “misogynist, racist and sexist marketing campaign” towards the boxer.
It’s now as much as prosecutors to determine whether or not to open an investigation. As is frequent in French legislation, the criticism doesn’t identify an alleged perpetrator however leaves it to investigators to find out who could possibly be at fault.
Khelif was unwittingly thrust right into a worldwide conflict over gender id and regulation in sports activities after her first combat, when Italian opponent Angela Carini pulled out simply seconds into the match, citing ache from opening punches. False claims that Khelif was transgender or a person erupted on-line, and the International Olympic Committee defended her and denounced these peddling misinformation. Khelif said that the unfold of misconceptions about her “harms human dignity.”
Earlier, Kirsty Burrows, an official answerable for the IOC’s unit for safeguarding and psychological well being, filed a criticism with French authorities saying she obtained dying threats and harassment on-line following a information convention in Paris at which she had spoken in protection of Khelif.
The Paris prosecutor’s workplace mentioned it obtained Burrows’ criticism on Aug. 4 and brokers from the Nationwide Unit for the Battle towards On-line Hate are investigating the alleged offenses, together with dying threats, public provocations aimed toward attacking an individual and cyberbullying. Beneath French legislation, the crimes, if confirmed, carry jail sentences that vary from two to 5 years and fines starting from 30,000 to 45,000 euros.
The Olympics-banned International Boxing Association disqualified Khelif and fellow boxer Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan from the world championships final yr, claiming the 2 fighters failed unspecified eligibility checks for ladies’s competitors. The IOC has referred to as the arbitrary intercourse checks that the game’s governing physique imposed on the 2 girls irretrievably flawed and has defended each boxers because the begin of the Paris Video games.
Specialists say the scrutiny of Khelif and Lin mirrored disproportionate scrutiny and discrimination towards female athletes of color in the case of intercourse testing and false claims that they’re male or transgender.
