The violence and silence behind the UCI's PR moment

CyclingTips Podcast

CyclingTips

Technology, Sports

4.4 • 931 Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this special episode of the CyclingTips podcast, our Senior Features Editor Iain Treloar digs into the evacuation efforts of Afghan cyclists in the wake of the Taliban’s return. Off the back of months of reporting, we reveal the bullying and blackmail behind a famous cyclist evacuation convoy backed by the UCI – and how the lists had been manipulated by the President of the Afghan Cycling Federation, Fazli Ahmad Fazli, to benefit family and friends instead of cyclists. With UCI backing, they received asylum, and Fazli received a major UCI award. Since CyclingTips broke the story, whistleblowers have been directly targeted, and a cyclist that Fazli believed to be a CyclingTips source was kidnapped and tortured for four days. Death threats have been issued, and now the Taliban is being sent after cyclists – apparently at Fazli’s orders. In a message to one cyclist, he said that the Taliban were his allies, and wrote that “until they have sent me pictures of their dead bodies, I will not rest.” This is a raw and sometimes challenging listen, but it’s important.

Transcript

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0:17.2	Welcome to this special edition episode of the Cycling Tips podcast. My name is Abby Mickey and I am joined by
0:19.2	Ian Trelor. Ian.
0:25.7	Abby, hi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about some bleak and horrible things with you. Excited's maybe the wrong word, but...
0:27.6	You've been on quite a journey the last couple of months with this story.
0:30.4	Should we start from the beginning?
0:32.0	Yeah, let's start from the beginning.
0:34.0	So I think that a lot of people probably came across news way back in October.
0:38.0	We're going back to October last year.
0:40.0	A lot's happened since then, but we'll start there.
0:42.0	When the UCI... year. A lot's happened since then, but we'll start there.
0:43.0	When the UCI in conjunction with Sylvan Adams, the owner of Israel Premier Tech,
0:51.0	they are called now, and Israel, and the UCI and the Afghan Cycling Federation,
1:00.5	as a big collaborative effort organized the evacuation of between 125 and 165 threatened Afghans.
1:09.0	At the time it was presented as mostly cyclists, These are people that were under threat from the Taliban
1:16.3	who had just taken over Afghanistan again
1:18.9	after the US withdrew.
1:21.3	And all of these cyclists and a mix of other people as well were evacuated by the
1:29.4	UCI and it was a great humanitarian moment.
1:33.0	Everyone was very excited about it.
1:34.5	The UCI was very excited by it.
1:37.6	And it could have just been a good news story.
1:46.4	But unfortunately it didn't quite turn out that way.
	...

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