Olympic champion boxer Imane Khelif filed a complaint in France that named billionaire Elon Musk and author J.K. Rowling as among the high-profile figures to amplify the online attacks against her, according to Variety.
Khelif’s lawyer Nabil Boudi told Variety that Musk and Rowling were named in a criminal complaint that claims she was a victim of cyber-harassment related to her gender identity. Boudi said in a statement posted on X that it was a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign”.
Khelif, who won a gold medal for Algeria in women’s welterweight boxing in Paris, faced intense scrutiny during the Olympics over her biological sex and gender identity, including baseless claims that she is a transgender woman or a cisgender man.
Last year, she was disqualified from the world boxing championships after a controversial boxing association said she failed an eligibility test.
The debate intensified when one of Khelif’s Olympic opponents, Italy’s Angela Carini, surrendered in the first round of their fight, saying she had “never felt a punch like this”.
That triggered a flood of hateful messages on social media alleging that Khelif was a man posing as a woman to cheat. Rowling and Musk were among the high-profile individuals to post about Khelif being a “man”.
Musk, the owner of X – formerly known as Twitter – and Tesla, backed a post saying “Men don’t belong in women’s sports,” accompanied by an image of Carini.
Rowling posted on X a picture of Khelif, describing her smile as “the smirk of a male who knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment”. The post was seen 122 million times as of Wednesday.
A representative for Rowling declined to comment. Boudi and a representative for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The complaint, filed in the Paris correctional court’s national centre for combating hate crimes, was filed against “X”, the French equivalent of “John Doe”.
This allows for the investigation of authors of social media posts in question, including those written under pseudonyms.
The case highlights the increasing appetite from law enforcement agencies around the world to crack down on online harms, including hate speech and incitement to violence.
The UK has charged about a dozen people with offences related to online speech following the far-right riots that swept through the country after three girls were killed in an attack on July 29.
The public prosecutor’s office in Paris confirmed it received a complaint on Monday from Khelif and that the centre on hate crimes had launched an investigation into charges of “cyber-harassment and public insults on the grounds of gender, public provocation to discrimination and public insults on the grounds of origin”.
Under French law, cyberbullying can carry a prison sentence of up to three years and fines.
There have been several high-profile cases in recent years, including when 28 individuals were fined and sentenced to jail for up to a year in March for harassing businesswoman Magali Berdah online with repeated death threats and insults.
Separately, several artists involved in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics filed cyber-harassment complaints after facing online threats, including its artistic director Thomas Jolly, drag queen Nicky Doll, and DJ Barbara Butsch.
