Egyptian football team suspends player for backing Mursi

CAIRO (Reuters) - A leading Egyptian football club said on Tuesday it would suspend one of its players and offer him for sale after he showed support for ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

Egyptian football team suspends player for backing Mursi

(Reuters)





Ahmed Abdelzaher will also be "prevented from representing the club and will not get any bonuses", the club Al Ahli said in a statement issued on its website.

After scoring a goal on Sunday in the African Champions league final match, Abdelzaher displayed the four-finger Muslim Brotherhood signal, which symbolises a raid by security forces on a pro-Mursi protest camp in Cairo in August in which hundreds of Islamists were killed.

"The Ahli Club administration refuses to mix sport with politics and has decided to suspend the player by not allowing him to represent the club in the World Clubs Cup in Morocco next month," it said in the statement.

"Abdelzaher confessed he made a mistake and said that he was ready to take any penalty," the statement added.

The player, who scored the second goal in Sunday's match which ended 2-0 for Ahli, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Egypt's army overthrew Mursi on July 3 and installed an interim government. It has since launched a security crackdown on Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood, arresting more than 2,000 members, including Mursi and other senior leaders. Security forces have killed hundreds of Mursi supporters.

Many Egyptians turned against the Brotherhood after Mursi's troubled year in office and now support the man who overthrew him, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

In October, an Egyptian kung fu champion was banned from representing the country after he showed support for Mursi.

(Reporting by Osama Khairy, writing by Michael Georgy and Yasmine Saleh, Editing by Gareth Jones)


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Egyptian football team suspends player for backing Mursi | SBS News