The Paris Prosecutor’s Office indicated this Wednesday that it has opened an investigation on the basis of the complaint filed by the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif for harassment, in relation to the controversy over her participation in the women’s events at the Paris Olympic Games.
The procedure aims to determine if what happened to Khelif corresponds to the crimes of cyberbullying motivated by gender, public insults also based on gender, public provocation to discrimination and public insults due to their origin, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office told EFE. The investigations have been entrusted to the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes (OCLCH) of the French Gendarmerie.
The boxer’s lawyer, Nabil Boudi, had explained that the target with The complaint was to determine who started the “misogynistic, racist and sexist campaign” against his client, but also “who fueled this digital lynching.” For the lawyer, “the unfair harassment suffered by the boxing champion will continue to be the biggest stain of these Olympic Games.”
The unfair harassment suffered by the boxing champion will continue to be the biggest stain of these Olympic Games
Khelif, who is 25 years old, won the final of the women’s category of less than 66 kilos last Friday in the midst of a controversy surrounding her intersexual nature. At the center of the controversy was the suspension she received from last year’s World Cup by the International Boxing Association (IBA). after subjecting her to a supposed femininity test – of which the details have not been communicated – which she supposedly did not pass.
The IBA is in open conflict with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which disavowed it and does not recognize it as an international boxing federation. Although the IOC allowed Khelif to participate in the Paris Olympic Games, the controversy over his case was strongly reopened during the Paris Olympic Games when he won his first fight by the premature retirement of the Italian Angela Carini, an action that received public support from the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who said that this confrontation was not done on equal terms.
The controversy, fueled in particular by far-right political figures, some of whom have described the Algerian boxer as a transsexual without evidence, has given rise in parallel to a wave of statements of transphobia online.
