PARIS: France has launched a cyberbullying probe following a complaint by Algerian Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif, who was at the centre of a gender controversy at the Paris Olympic Games, prosecutors said on Wednesday. The controversy has rapidly become a hot-button issue outside the ring, with politicians and celebrities including Donald Trump and Elon Musk weighing in. The investigation was opened Tuesday into “cyberharassment” following the high-profile gender row at the Games, the Paris public prosecutor’s office told AFP.

The athlete’s lawyer Nabil Boudi said last week that Khelif, 25, had filed a complaint for online harassment, calling it a “fight for justice.” “The investigation will determine who was behind this misogynist, racist and sexist campaign, but will also have to concern itself with those who fed the online lynching,” he said at the time. The Central Office for Combating Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes has been tasked with the investigation.

‘Born a woman’

According to US magazine Variety, billionaire entrepreneur Musk and Harry Potter author JK Rowling have been named in the complaint. Former US President Trump, who is the Republican party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential race, would also be part of the investigation, Variety said, citing the lawyer.

Khelif won the women’s 66kg final against China’s Yang Liu in a unanimous points decision, having been the focus of intense scrutiny in the French capital during the Olympics. Together with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won the 57kg women’s final, Khelif was disqualified from last year’s world championships after they failed gender eligibility testing. However they were cleared to compete in Paris, setting the stage for one of the biggest controversies of the Games. The row in Paris erupted after Khelif won her bout against Italy’s Angela Carini in just 46 seconds with two strong punches to the Italian’s nose.

Trump said he would “keep men out of women’s sports” and his running mate JD Vance described the bout as a “grown man pummelling a woman in a boxing match”. Rowling also weighed in, saying on X that the Paris Olympics would be “forever tarnished by the brutal injustice done to Carini”. The International Boxing Association’s Russian president and Kremlin-linked oligarch, Umar Kremlev, has targeted both athletes, claiming that Khelif and Lin had undergone “genetic testing that shows that these are men”.

The IBA were responsible for the world championships in 2023 that Lin and Khelif were thrown out of, but the IOC cleared them to box in Paris. Khelif said she is “a woman like any other”. “I was born a woman, lived a woman and competed as a woman,” she told reporters about her eligibility. “They hate me and I don’t know why,” she said of the IBA.

‘Defamation campaign’

Russia’s team has been banned from the Paris Olympics over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, Khelif received a hero’s welcome at Algiers airport, with crowds cheering the boxer with chants of “Tahia Imane” (Long live Imane).

An editorial in government daily El Moudjahid praised Khelif. “Imane’s victory is also a victory for the oppressed and the excluded, but above all it is a victory for the law, which for too long has been trampled by the logic of the powerful, who are greedy for domination and adept at double-standard policies.”

Asked if the International Olympic Committee was prepared to consider reviewing the gender issue, its president Thomas Bach has said: “If someone is presenting us a scientifically solid system how to identify men and women, we are the first ones to do it. “But what is not possible that someone is saying this is not a woman just by looking at somebody or by falling prey to a defamation campaign by a not credible organisation with highly political interest.” – AFP