The president of Mali’s basketball federation has been suspended and the West African nation’s former women’s youth national coach has been jailed on charges of sexually abusing players, according to the country’s sports ministry and the prosecutor in the assault case.
And as the Tokyo Olympics enter a second week, Human Rights Watch is pressuring Hamane Niang, the beleaguered president of FIBA, basketball’s world governing body, to resign or be permanently removed from the sport’s highest-ranking international position.
Niang, 69, stepped aside, at least temporarily, as FIBA president in mid-June, as The New York Times prepared to publish its investigation into allegations of systemic sexual harassment and abuse of dozens of female players in Mali, the majority of them teenagers, at least since the early 2000s.