Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling Named in Imane Khelif's Cyberbullying Criminal Complaint in France: Report
Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics, plans to continue her fight against her critics on social media after the Olympic event ends.
A lawyer representing Khelif confirmed to Variety that X owner Elon Musk and author J.K. Rowling—two of her most vocal critics on social media—would be named in a criminal complaint filed with French authorities over allegations of “aggravated cyber harassment.”
The complaint was reportedly submitted to the anti-online hatred center at the Paris public prosecutor's office on Friday. Musk and Rowling may just be the beginning of Khelif's targets, as the structure of the lawsuit gives prosecutors the freedom to investigate anyone who has harassed her, including former President Donald Trump.
According to Variety:
The lawsuit was filed against X, which under French law means that it was filed against unknown persons. This “ensures that the prosecution has all the latitude to investigate anyone,” including those who may have written hateful messages under pseudonyms, said Boudi. Nevertheless, the complaint mentions some famously controversial figures.
“J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk are named in the lawsuit, among others,” he said, adding that Donald Trump would also be part of the investigation. “Trump tweeted about this, so whether or not he is named in our lawsuit, he will inevitably be looked into as part of the prosecution.”
Khelif officially filed the complaint on Saturday, one day after she won gold in the women’s 66kg division. Her presence at the Olympics became one of the most controversial stories of the Games, with misinformation regarding her gender spreading across nearly every corner of the internet.
What Did Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling Say About Imane Khelif? Rowling, who has become one of the most vocal anti-transgender voices on social media, repeatedly tweeted about Khelif once she became a public figure, with a total of 36 posts, reposts, and replies over 10 days about the boxer and the circumstances surrounding her.
In one of her posts, Rowling accused Khelif of being a man "enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered."
Meanwhile, Musk was more reserved but did retweet a post reading "Men don’t belong in women’s sports" with the comment "absolutely." Both examples came immediately after Khelif’s quick defeat of Italy’s Angela Carini, who retired 46 seconds into the fight after taking a punch to the face.
The Facts Surrounding Imane Khelif’s Gender Debate The controversy surrounding Khelif is rooted in the ongoing debate over transgender participation in women’s sports, which has grown louder despite very few examples at any level of real competition.
However, Khelif is not transgender by any definition. She was identified as female at birth, raised as a girl, and had competed as a woman for six years before the Paris Olympics.
The question surrounding Khelif instead revolves around whether she possesses XY chromosomes, which can occur in people who have identified and been identified as women their entire lives. This issue was introduced by the entity known as the International Boxing Association (IBA).
The IBA first conducted gender tests on Khelif and Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-ting in 2022 but did not suspend them from competition until 2023. The IBA never officially identified those tests or provided any proof of the results, but IBA president Umar Kremlev later claimed Khelif had been shown to have XY chromosomes.
It is crucial to note that all of this is happening in the context of a public war between the IBA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which stripped the organization of its control over Olympic boxing in 2019 after years of alleged corruption and incompetence. The IOC chose to allow Khelif and Yu-ting to compete in Paris—citing the standard of being identified as female on their passports—which led to the IBA re-inserting itself back into the conversation.
This effort culminated in a press conference in which the IBA severely damaged its credibility in the international media, as the two sides continued to debate over the validity of those tests in 2022 and 2023. Even by the considerable standards of international sports organizations, the IBA is considered a complete mess.
So the questions surrounding Khelif are essentially whether the IBA can be trusted and, if their claims are true, whether the presence of an XY chromosome should disqualify a person from female competition as an unfair advantage. The serious conversation about Khelif differs greatly from what was being shouted on social media, and now Khelif appears to be targeting the loudest voices of the latter.