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PARIS — French prosecutors opened an investigation into an online harassment complaint made by Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif after a torrent of criticism and false claims about her sex during the Summer Games, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Wednesday.

The athlete’s lawyer Nabil Boudi filed a legal complaint Friday with a special unit in the Paris prosecutor’s office that combats online hate speech.

Boudi said the boxer was targeted by a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” as she won gold in the women’s welterweight division, becoming a hero in her native Algeria and bringing global attention to women’s boxing.

The prosecutor’s office said it had received the complaint and its Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crime had opened an investigation on charges of “cyber harassment based on gender, public insults based on gender, public incitement to discrimination and public insults on the basis of origin.”

Khelif was thrust into a worldwide clash over gender identity and regulation in sports after her first fight in Paris, when Italian opponent Angela Carini pulled out just seconds into the match, citing pain from opening punches.

Claims that Khelif was transgender or a man erupted online. The International Olympic Committee defended her and denounced those peddling misinformation. Khelif said that the spread of misconceptions about her “harms human dignity.”

Among those who referred to Khelif as a man in critical online posts were Donald Trump and J. K. Rowling. Tech billionaire Elon Musk reposted a comment calling Khelif a man.

Khelif’s legal complaint was filed against “X,” instead of a specific perpetrator, a common formulation under French law that leaves it up to investigators to determine which person or organization may have been at fault.

The Paris prosecutor’s office didn’t name specific suspects.

The development came after Khelif returned to Algeria, where she met with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Wednesday and will be welcomed by family later this week in her hometown of Ain Mesbah.

In Algeria, Khelif’s former coach Mustapha Bensaou said the boxer’s complaint in France was initiated by the Algerian authorities and should “serve as a lesson in defending the rights and honor (of athletes) in Algeria and around the world.”

“All those involved will be prosecuted for violating Imane’s dignity and honor,” Bensaou said in an interview with The Associated Press. He added: “The attacks on Imane were designed to break her and undermine her morale. Thank God, she triumphed.”

The investigation is one of several underway by France’s hate crimes unit that are connected to the Olympics.

It is also investigating alleged death threats and cyberbullying against Kirsty Burrows, an official in charge of the IOC’s unit for safeguarding and mental health, after she defended Khelif during a news conference in Paris. Under French law, the crimes, if proven, carry prison sentences that range from two to five years and fines ranging from 30,000 to 45,000 euros.

The unit is also examining complaints over death threats, harassment or other abuse targeting six people involved in the Games’ opening ceremony, including its director Thomas Jolly.
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Authorities in Britain are trying to work out the origins of the violent far-right protests that erupted in towns and cities across the country earlier this month. While some blame simple racism and false news spread on social media, others say deeper social and economic forces are at work. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Berlin — Germany has asked Poland to arrest a Ukrainian diving instructor who was allegedly part of a team that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines two years ago, according to reports in German media published on Wednesday. 

However, one media outlet said the man appeared to be no longer living in Poland.  

The multi-billion-dollar Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines transporting gas under the Baltic Sea were ruptured by a series of blasts in September 2022, seven months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

German investigators believe the Ukrainian diver was part of a team that planted the explosives, the SZ and Die Zeit newspapers reported alongside the ARD broadcaster, citing unnamed sources. 

The German prosecutor general’s office declined to comment on the reports, which said the German government had handed a European arrest warrant to Poland in June. The Polish National Public Prosecutor’s Office made no immediate comment. 

The German interior ministry declined to comment and the justice ministry did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment. 

Suspected accomplices 

Another man and a woman — also Ukrainian diving instructors — have been identified in Germany’s investigation into the sabotage but so far no arrest warrants have been issued for them, according to SZ, Zeit and ARD. 

The explosions destroyed three out of four Nord Stream pipelines, which had become a controversial symbol of German reliance on Russian gas in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Russia blamed the United States, Britain and Ukraine for the blasts, which largely cut Russian gas off from the lucrative European market. Those countries have denied involvement. 

Germany, Denmark, and Sweden all opened investigations into the incident, and the Swedes found traces of explosives on several objects recovered from the explosion site, confirming the blasts were deliberate acts. 

The Swedish and Danish probes were closed this February without identifying any suspect. 

In January 2023, Germany raided a ship that it said may have been used to transport explosives and told the United Nations that it believed trained divers could have attached devices to the pipelines at a depth of about 70 to 80 meters (230-262 ft). 

 
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LONDON — The Chinese government has resubmitted its plans to build a “super embassy” in London, a decision testing the new British government’s strategy for dealing with China after the victory of the Labour Party in the general election last month.

According to the new plan, the super embassy will be built on the former Royal Mint Court site near the Tower of London, with a total area of about 576,000 square meters (620,000 square feet) — 10 times the size of China’s existing embassy in London.

The project includes not only the embassy building but also 225 residences and a cultural exchange center. 

The proposal was rejected by the Tower Hamlets Council in 2022 and was set aside after China failed to appeal in time. 

Since China bought the land for roughly $327 million in 2018, the plan has faced ongoing opposition from members of parliament and local residents concerned about security, particularly as protests in the surrounding area could increase significantly.

A Tower Hamlets Council spokesperson told VOA the planning team is reviewing the latest application, and public consultation has begun, but a target committee date has not been scheduled.

Politicians and activists believe that China’s choice to resubmit its plan is a test of the bottom line of the new British government’s China policy. Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith believes the Labour Party may not be as tough on China as the Conservatives.

“The Labour government has become ambivalent about China and has in no way seemed to be taking any interest in the threat that China is posing,” he told VOA in a phone interview.

With the Labour government coming to power in early July, the United Kingdom’s relationship with China is undergoing a process of re-examination. Foreign Minister David Lammy said the administration would conduct a comprehensive review of its relationship with China to ensure that it could cooperate with China in areas of common interest while addressing global threats.

George Robertson, the former NATO secretary-general and head of the British government’s strategic defense assessment, warned that China was one of the countries that posed a deadly threat to the U.K.

The “Strategic Defense Review,” expected to be published in the first half of 2025, will help define the government’s defense policy for the next decade. The re-application of China’s super embassy program will undoubtedly be a test in this review process and policy shift.

The Tower Hamlets Council is dominated by the Labour Party. According to The Daily Telegraph, representatives of the Chinese Embassy in the U.K. said in a document submitted to the district council that the 2022 refusal decision was baseless and urged officials to reconsider the plan.

“I have no doubt that this will be classified as a risk and be evaluated continuously by the Labour Party,” said Rex Lee, a media spokesman for ESEA4Labour. 

East and Southeast Asians for Labour was founded in 1999 with the mission of promoting the Labour Party’s values, civic conscience and duties, according to its website.

“The Labour Party has been clear in their support of Hong Kongers and Uyghurs and all others who try to hold the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] into account in human rights breaches. There is no space for CCP to maneuver under the Labour government,” he said.

Megan Khoo, policy adviser for Hong Kong Watch, told VOA that the proposal “should feature in the new government’s audit of U.K.-China relations, including how such an establishment would hold the potential to threaten the more than 190,000 Hong Kongers which now call Britain home. 

“This site could serve as a vessel for the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] increasing transnational repression against Hong Kongers and other Chinese dissident groups, and as such, has no place on U.K. soil. The new government must not allow itself to be toyed with and make it immediately clear that it will not allow the PRC to call the shots,” she said.

VOA requested comment from the Chinese Embassy but did not receive a response by the time of publication.  

The Royal Mint site has sparked many discussions about the preservation and safety of history, due to its historical value. 

“It’s a historic building, which would not lend itself to be an embassy,” said Smith, the former Conservative Party leader. “It would be the loss of a historic building under the ownership of China. It would become Chinese territory forever, and that is not to be allowed. Certainly not the CCP.”

In 2022, pro-democracy protesters were assaulted by Chinese diplomats outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester. Opponents of the new embassy site argue that this incident demonstrates China’s intention to use the location to suppress protests, as the site offers limited space for demonstrations.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Vancouver, British Columbia — Tens of thousands of people have signed online petitions for the release of environmentalist Paul Watson, the controversial activist arrested in Greenland on an extradition request by the Japanese government.

Watson’s latest legal journey started July 21 in Nuuk, Greenland, when he was arrested aboard his foundation’s ship, the John Paul DeJoria.

His arrest and extradition appear to be tied to alleged actions in 2010 against the Japanese whaling vessel Shonan Maru 2.

For the past several decades, Watson has been known to take severe measures, including the ramming and disabling of whaling ships, to stop the commercial harvesting of whales. Many of the ships were from Japan. He also gained further notoriety as the focus of the reality TV series “Whale Wars.”

The John Paul DeJoria’s captain, Lockhart MacLean, said it made a regular stop for provisions when Danish national police came aboard after a friendly visit by Greenlandic police. Greenland is a territory of Denmark.

“So, these were police that had been flown in from Copenhagen, came on board, and they had a very different attitude,” MacLean said. “They’re much more, much more aggressive and firm, and obviously, within a few minutes, they had taken Paul Watson in cuffs into a van, off the ship.”

MacLean said the ship will continue to travel via the Panama Canal into the Pacific Ocean in an effort to stop Japanese whaling.  

Watson, a 73-year-old Canadian American, has been arrested many times.

Among the original members of Greenpeace, created in 1972 in Vancouver, he split from that organization five years later to form the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Under that group, he garnered worldwide headlines for ramming whaling ships at sea. He formed the Captain Paul Watson Foundation in 2022.

Rex Weyler was the director of the original Greenpeace and co-founded Greenpeace International in 1979.

He says Watson’s arrests usually strengthen his cause.

“Paul Watson being arrested is one of his tactics, and it was one of our tactics at Greenpeace, which is to challenge what the whalers or sealers or other extractors of ecological resources were doing,” Weyler said. “And if they wanted to arrest us, that’s fine, because when they arrest us, it only heightens the story. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

For Teale Phelps Bondaroff, research director of OceansAsia, Watson’s arrest was a surprise. Bondaroff, who has worked for Sea Shepherd in the past, said the arrest shows that commercial harvesting of whales still exists.

“Anything like this draws attention to the issue. One of the things I find is interesting is a lot of folks, when you talk about whaling, see it as something of the past and aren’t aware of the fact that there are still countries that are whaling today,” Bondaroff said.

MacLean said because of Watson’s age, a 15-year prison sentence in Japan would amount to a life sentence. He hopes that a freed Watson will manage to rejoin them on their campaign against Japanese whaling.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry was asked to comment on this story through the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa but did not respond.
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