Three days ago, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif won a gold medal in the women’s welterweight division of the 2024 Olympics. It should have been a triumphant moment for an athlete who spent years training for this moment and won all four of her matches on the world’s biggest stage. Instead, her victory was shadowed by a relentless campaign of bad-faith criticism focused on factually baseless claims about her gender. Because the games took place in France, which has robust laws against online hate speech, Khelif has now filed a legal complaint with a Paris prosecutor’s office.
According to the Associated Press, Khelif’s lawyers filed the complaint alleging “aggravated cyber-harassment” on Aug. 9, the day she won the gold medal. The complaint reportedly does not name a specific perpetrator; instead, the prosecutor’s office will conduct an investigation and decide whether to charge anyone under the statute, which could call for two to five years in prison and tens of thousands of Euros in fines.
Attorney Nabil Boudi wrote in the complaint that the campaign of “speculation fueled by malicious individuals… exceeded 100 million views” on the X platform, becoming an “ordeal” for Khelif.
“I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects,” Khelif reportedly told the sports video news service SNTV. She added that online harassment “can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”
The manufactured right-wing controversy around Khelif began on Aug. 1, when her opponent, Italian boxer Angela Carini, withdrew from a bout after just 46 seconds, saying, “I have never been hit so hard in my life.” This led to a torrent of specious critiques from people like Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling, Donald Trump, and Logan Paul, all of whom falsely suggested that Khelif is a trans woman and/or that she should be barred from women’s athletic events. In fact, Khelif, 25, was raised as a girl from birth, has never identified as a man, and lives in a country with strict anti-trans laws that would make the scenario invented by conservative critics extremely unlikely. The allegations about her gender are simply not true. (Paul later posted a statement that began with the word “OOPSIES,” admitting that “I might be guilty of spreading misinformation.”)
While the Russian-dominated International Boxing Association disqualified Khelif and another boxer from last year’s world championships, that decision has been roundly rejected by the boxing community; the IBA is currently led by a right-wing Putin crony with a history of homophobic and transphobic remarks. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach has condemned the “hate speech…aggression and abuse” directed at Khelif, which he linked to Russia’s ongoing conflict with the IOC.
Carini, for her part, swiftly disavowed the entire line of attack being employed by her supposed supporters. The day after the bout, she said she’d like to apologize to Khelif: “All this controversy certainly made me sad, and I also felt sorry for my opponent, she had nothing to do with it and like me was only here to fight… I have nothing against Khelif and on the contrary if I happened to meet her again I would give her a hug.”