Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif has filed a legal complaint in France for online harassment after a rain of criticism and false claims about her sex during the Paris Olympics, her lawyer said Sunday.
Khelif won gold on Friday in the women’s welterweight division, becoming a new hero in her native Algeria and bringing global attention to women’s boxing.
The complaint was filed on Friday itself with a special unit in the Paris prosecutor’s office for combating online hate speech, alleging “aggravated cyber-harassment” targeting Khelif, lawyer Nabil Boudi said. In a statement, he described it as a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” against the boxer.
It is now up to prosecutors to decide whether to open an investigation.
Khelif was unwittingly thrust into a worldwide clash over gender identity and regulation in sports after her first fight, when Italian opponent Angela Carini pulled out just seconds into the match, citing pain from opening punches.
False claims that she was transgender or a man erupted online, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) defended her and denounced those peddling misinformation. Khelif said the spread of misconceptions about her “harms human dignity.”
The IOC has called the arbitrary sex tests that the sport’s governing body, the Olympics-banned International Boxing Association, imposed on her was irretrievably flawed.
