The UCI has suspended the president of the Afghanistan Biking Federation (ACF) for sending “abusive and/or threatening” messages.
Fazli Ahmad Fazli has been banned from all cycling-related actions for 15 months, following a ruling from the governing physique’s Ethics Fee on Tuesday.
The suspension comes after reviews that Fazli had intimidated riders and journalists, prioritised himself and his household in an evacuation mission for susceptible cyclists, and threatened to droop riders’ licenses.
The UCI opened its investigations into the ACF president virtually three years in the past, and initially dominated there was “no proof” that justified pursuing a breach of ethics. On Tuesday, the governing physique revealed it had continued its investigations.
A UCI assertion learn: “On this respect, it was discovered that the President of the Afghanistan Biking Federation had, on a number of events, despatched messages to members of the Afghan biking neighborhood which have been deemed to be in breach of Articles 5, 6.4 and a pair of.1 of Annex 1 of the UCI Code of Ethics resulting from their abusive and/or threatening nature, and the truth that he due to this fact abused his place.”
The articles cited within the assertion check with abuse of place, failure to guard individuals’s bodily and psychological integrity, and psychological abuse.
Following the Taliban’s takeover of energy in Afghanistan in 2021, the ACF and UCI labored collectively to organise the evacuation of 165 individuals.
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Fazli was awarded a UCI Benefit for his involvement within the evacuation, credited for his “brave dedication to the event of biking, notably ladies’s biking in a rustic the place preventing for this trigger is a danger”.
In November 2021, two months after Fazli obtained the award, CyclingTips reported allegations that, in compiling the listing of individuals to be evacuated, senior figures inside the ACF had prioritised their very own household and mates over susceptible cyclists.
There have been then additional allegations that Afghan cyclists had been topic to verbal and bodily abuse, in response to a report in Escape Collective.
ACF president Fazli has now been judged to have despatched messages of an “abusive and/or threatening nature”, and suspended for 15 months by the UCI.
The UCI has mentioned it’s going to make no additional touch upon the choice of its Ethics Fee at this stage. Biking Weekly has contacted the ACF for remark and can replace this text if it responds.
