Al-Ahly football club bans striker
Ahmed Abdel-Zaher for hand gesture linked to supporters of ousted President
Morsi.
Egypt's Al-Ahly football club says it has suspended striker Ahmed Abdel-Zaher without pay for using a four-fingered hand gesture linked to supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi in a goal celebration, according to the Associated Press.
The newly crowned African club
champion said that the 28-year-old forward was suspended on Monday
for showing the sign after scoring the second goal in a 2-0 win over South
Africa's Orlando Pirates in the African Champions League final second leg in
Cairo on Sunday.
Ahly won 3-1 on aggregate for its
eighth continental club title.
The suspension means that
Abdel-Zaher may miss next month's FIFA Club World Cup in Morocco, the club
sources said.
Islamists have often flashed the
four-finger sign, called Rabaa (four) in Arabic, at anti-military protests
since a deadly crackdown on supporters of ousted President Morsi in Cairo's
Rabaa al-Adawiya square on August 14 left hundreds of people killed.
A senior member of the club told AFP
news agency on condition of anonymity that the move to suspend
Abdel-Zaher was being taken because "he mixed politics with
sport".
Egypt's minister of state for sport,
Taher Abu Zeid, said in a statement that he "expects" the nation's
football federation to "suspend and fine Abdel-Zaher the way Kung Fu fighter Mohamed Youssef was".
Egypt's Kung Fu Association banned
Youssef from international championships for two years after he wore a T-shirt
bearing the four-finger sign last month at a tournament in Russia.
"The ministry itself cannot
take such decisions but the concerned institutions can," said Abu Zeid
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