Imane Khelif files harassment complaint amid boxing gender dispute

Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer at the centre of a gender dispute at the Paris Olympics, has filed a formal legal complaint, citing being the victim of online harassment, her lawyer said on Saturday.

Khelif, who won the gold medal in the women’s welterweight category on Friday, has along with Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-ting been in the spotlight at the Games in a dispute that has dominated headlines and been the subject of heated debate on social media.

Khelif’s lawyer Nabil Boudi told Reuters the complaint was filed on Friday.

“All that is being said about me on social media is immoral. I want to change the minds of people around the world,” Khelif said on Saturday.

Khelif became her country’s first Olympic gold medallist in 12 years, and only the seventh in history, by defeating China’s Yang Liu with a unanimous result in front of a heavily Algerian-flavoured crowd on Friday night in Paris. Lin also won a gold medal at the Games, in the women’s featherweight division on Saturday night in Paris.

“Whether I qualify or not, or whether I’m a woman or not, I have made many statements in the media,” Khelif said in the press conference when asked about the furore over her eligibility.

“I am fully qualified to take part in this competition. I am a woman like any other woman. I was born a woman, I lived a woman, I competed as a woman. There’s no doubt about that. There are enemies of success – this is what I call them. That also gives my success a special test because of these attacks.”

Banished by the International Boxing Association (IBA), whose two gender tests over the past two years allegedly revealed male chromosomes in her DNA, the Algerian was welcomed by the International Olympic Committee, which disregarded the IBA’s findings as “flawed” and “illegitimate”.