Khalilah Camacho-Ali, former spouse of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, talking at an occasion. — AFP/File
KABUL: A former spouse of legendary US boxer Muhammad Ali arrived within the Afghan capital, a Taliban authorities official stated Friday, to reportedly open a stadium in a rustic the place girls are barred from sports activities.
The top of the Taliban authorities’s sports activities directorate, Ahmadullah Wasiq, advised AFP that Khalilah Camacho-Ali, who was married to the boxer for a decade from 1967, had arrived in Kabul.
State media cited the directorate as saying she was within the metropolis “to build a sports stadium to be named ‘Pirozi’ (victory in Dari) and a sports association named after Muhammad Ali”.
Born Belinda Boyd in 1950 in the USA, Camacho-Ali, like her world champion boxer ex-husband, transformed to Islam after they married.
Muhammad Ali himself visited Kabul in 2002, a 12 months after the US forces overthrew the primary Taliban authorities, visiting a women’ faculty in his function as a United Nations peace ambassador.
Because the Taliban authorities got here to energy in Afghanistan in 2021, they’ve imposed a strict regulation, with girls bearing the brunt of restrictions the United Nations have referred to as “gender apartheid”, together with blocking girls from collaborating in sports activities.
Throughout the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, public executions in sports activities stadiums have been frequent.
Public corporal punishment has continued since their return to energy and no less than two public executions have been held in a sports activities stadium.
The authorities have lately set restrictions on fight sports activities as effectively, saying free preventing reminiscent of in Blended Martial Arts was un-Islamic.
Camacho-Ali is a martial artist, in addition to an actress and creator, in line with her web site.
Ali was born Cassius Clay within the southeastern state of Kentucky and is called each a sporting nice and for his function in preventing for civil rights for African People. He died in 2016.
