Olympic boxing champion’s lawyer condemns ‘speculations fuelled by malicious people’ who posted grievances on-line.
Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer on the centre of a gender dispute on the Paris Olympic Video games, has filed a authorized grievance in opposition to the social media platform X for harassment.
The gold medal winner’s lawyer mentioned on Saturday that she filed the formal grievance in France. Khelif and one other gold medallist, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, have been on the centre of a high-profile dispute over gender identification that has provoked heated debate on social media.
Citing courtroom paperwork, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that the boxing champion “filed a grievance in opposition to X” with the Paris correctional courtroom, the nationwide centre for combating on-line harassment.
Khelif’s lawyer Nabil Boudi mentioned the grievance was filed on Friday.
“The boxer Imane Khelif has determined to start a brand new combat, a combat for justice, dignity and honour,” he mentioned in an announcement as he introduced the grievance for “aggravated on-line harassment … [had been filed] to Paris prosecutors”.
“All that’s being mentioned about me on social media is immoral. I wish to change the minds of individuals around the globe,” Khelif mentioned.
People within the grievance have been described as “essential political figures” with large followings on X, the social media firm owned by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The posts focusing on Khelif “exceeded 100 million views,” it added.
The hypothesis was “fuelled by malicious people,” Boudi mentioned. “The investigation will decide who was behind this misogynist, racist and sexist marketing campaign however may also should concern itself with those that fed the web lynching.”
The furore over Khelif’s eligibility drew hearth from the likes of former United States President Donald Trump, Harry Potter creator JK Rowling and several other right-wing French politicians.
After her gold medal victory on Friday night time, Khelif mentioned profitable was the proper response to “assaults” and “bullying” and declared: “I’m a lady like every other.”
The questions concerning Khelif’s and Lin’s gender have been sparked by the Worldwide Boxing Affiliation (IBA).
At a information convention final week, the IBA’s Kremlin-linked president, Umar Kremlev, claimed the organisation had run “genetic testing that exhibits that these are males”.
The IBA threw each boxers out of the world championships in 2023. The Worldwide Olympic Committee, nevertheless, cleared them to field in Paris.
Requested if she would take measures much like Khelif, Lin mentioned: “That is one thing I’ll talk about with my workforce. We are going to determine later what the subsequent step will likely be.”
Following an early spherical victory for Khelif within the ring, Rowling referred to the boxer as a “male” and accused her of “having fun with the misery of a lady he’s simply punched within the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s simply shattered”.
Trump declared in capital letters on his Fact Social outlet: “I’ll preserve males out of ladies’s sports activities”. His vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, argued that “Kamala Harris’s concepts about gender” have led “to a grown man pummelling a lady in a boxing match”.