Imane Khelif won the women’s 66kg final against China’s Yang Liu with a unanimous points decision (File)
Paris, France:
France has launched a cyberbullying investigation following a complaint by Algerian Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif, who was at the center of a gender controversy at the Paris Olympics, prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The investigation was opened on Tuesday into “cyber harassment” after the high-profile gender row at the Games, the Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP.
The athlete’s lawyer, Nabil Boudi, said last week that Khelif, 25, had filed a complaint of online harassment, calling it a “fight for justice.”
“The investigation will determine who was behind this misogynistic, racist and sexist campaign, but will also need to address those who fueled the online lynching,” he said at the time.
Khelif won the final of the women’s 66kg event against China’s Yang Liu in a unanimous points decision after being the center of attention at the Olympic Games in the French capital.
Along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won the women’s 57kg final, Khelif was disqualified from last year’s world championships after failing the gender eligibility test.
However, they were allowed to compete in Paris, setting the stage for one of the biggest controversies of the Games.
Russian International Boxing Association President Umar Kremlev has targeted both athletes, claiming Khelif and Lin “have undergone genetic tests that show these are men.”
The IBA was responsible for the 2023 world championships from which Lin and Khelif were thrown out, but the IOC allowed them to box in Paris.
Khelif said she is “a woman like any other.”
“I was born a woman, lived as a woman and competed as a woman,” she told reporters about her eligibility.
The Russian team has been banned from the Paris Olympics due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
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