Skiing coach, athletes harassed at airport

FIA accuses Wali of smuggling children from Kazakhstan.

KARACHI: Pakistan skiing coach Amjad Wali lodged an official complaint yesterday against the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)  for misconduct and humiliation of the national under-14 squad

The Ski Federation of Pakistan (SFP) official, along with the athletes, was harassed by the officials on their return from their participation in the Asian Children Skiing Championship in Kazakhstan.

According to Wali, the team returned to Islamabad on March 2 when the FIA officials humiliated them by locking him and the four children in a room and accusing Wali for child smuggling without scrutinising their passports. Wali said the episode left the athletes scared and humiliated.

“The FIA officials just assumed that we were deported from Kazakhstan because we stayed there for four days,” Wali told The Express Tribune. “I was with the four under-14 athletes and after coming out of the terminal we were just waiting for our turn for clearance when they took us to a room, told us to stay there and locked it from the outside and switched off the lights.”

Wali, father of South Asian Games 2011 medallists Aminah and Ifrah Wali, said that the FIA officials later told him after verbally abusing him that since the passport stated that the team stayed in Kazakhstan for four days, they assumed that he was a child smuggler. Eventually, they were released after much agitation.

The coach along with other SFP officials officially complained to the director general of FIA in a meeting, while SFP has stated that they will ask the FIA officials involved for an explanation.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2013.